What Can One Person Do?
Send a note to your neighbors
Every Election I Send An Email To My Neighbors
I’m going to post it here, not because these elections are ones that you can vote in—most likely they are not—but in the hope that you’ll use it as a template. You can send an email like this. You can do it today or tomorrow, or any time it seems relevant: the beginning of a voter registration window, or the end of a voting week, for example.
You can send it to 2 people, or 200, depending on your email connections. This type of nonjudgmental communication is very valuable.
Instead of telling your neighbors how you’re going to vote. Let them know that now is good time to vote or register - and what their options are.
Too often we rely on other people or organizations to tell us how to vote. It’s nice to have someone say: here’s some information. You decide what’s best for you.
I send the dates, times and locations of Early and Election Day voting and try to include a link to a sample ballot. I put in links to debates, candidates websites, summarize their strengths, mention a concern being expressed about them and sometimes list some endorsements. I try to stay neutral.
Local Voter Turnout Rates in Primaries are Abysmal
In 2024 in New York City: only 6.6% of voters turned out for the April primary, 10.1% in the June primary.
These races generally get very little coverage and with the cratering of local news, it’s even less. The media, and our political organizations obsess on the big national races.
But small races have big impacts. In the New York democratic primary there is a 3-way battle for the Comptroller’s race. The New York state comptroller invests almost 300 billion dollars. That’s a lot of decision making for a job that very few people have ever even heard of.
Below is the email I sent this morning.
Now you send one.
Send it whenever you can. Because any time you reach out to help your neighbors participate is a good time. Pick something you think it’s helpful for your neighbors to know about and get started. You can probably send an informative email in an hour.
Today, June 21, 2026 is the last day of Early Voting in New York.
Our Early Voting Polling location is
Erasmus Hall HS: 911 Flatbush Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11226
Polls are open 9am - 5pm
There are important and competitive races on the ballot
Voting in the primary is often more important than the general election in November. Because NY is so heavily Democratic, your real chance for input is now, when the race is between the Democrats. There is no Republican primary this year.
See the notes below
Congratulations if you already voted!
You can also vote on Tuesday!
Election Day is June 23, 2026
Our location is: PS 181: 1023 New York Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11203 (same as usual)
Polls are open 6:00AM - 9:00PM
Details about candidates below...
Save The Date & Join Us: July 11th
It’s an Event called Votapalooza!
A 6-hour online marathon livestream reading of “Deliver the Vote“ - - a brilliant, mesmerizing chronicle of the remarkably creative and astonishingly frequent history of election fraud in U.S. elections.
It’s a fundraiser for our organization SMART Elections. You don’t have to donate to watch, but we encourage you to support us - if you find the information we provide useful. You’ll learn a lot about our elections and it will be fun!
We’ll feature celebrity readings including one from Erika Alexander actress from the film “Is God Is?’ and many other projects like “Living Single” and “Get Out.”
This election:
3 Competitive Races in our district:
Candidates are listed in alphabetical order
You can vote for 1 candidate in each race.
There is no ranked choice voting for these races.
Congress
We are in the 9th Congressional District
There was no debate and minimal coverage, so I’ve put together brief information from websites.
There are articles in
All 3 candidates support Universal Health Care.
Joshua Bristol - (from his website) A Black man raised by a single mother and living with disabilities, he says he understands what it means to navigate systems that weren’t built for us. Find his policy proposals here. Long wait times for the bus and subway and crowded conditions are an issue in the district. Bristol says his “Affordable & Accessible Transportation for All policy” is “coming soon...”
Yvette Clark has been our Congresswoman since 2013. She is the only Black woman representing New York in Congress. Her campaign is emphasizing her historic position by featuring a photo of her with Barack Obama on her website. She says that in 2019, she introduced the Affordable Housing and Area Median Income Fairness Act to cut rent in subsidized areas. If you dig further into her website, more recently, she helped allocate funds to CISA - the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, “to ensure that CISA is better equipped to detect vulnerabilities and identify malicious activity.”
Concerns about Yvette Clark: 2019 was 7 years ago. It’s odd that she’s listing that as her legislative accomplishment, when the bill did not even pass. I personally have tried contacting her office multiple times to try to improve our postal service. Our mail is constantly getting lost and the lines are always long at the post office. I have never received a response from her office.
Mike Goldfarb is a Jewish businessman who says he deeply admires Jackie Robinson. His policy proposals are listed here. On immigration he says, “We should expand options for folks to legally immigrate here, provide pathways to citizenship for undocumented people already here, and restart our immigration enforcement system from scratch.”
Next up
Comptroller - The comptroller manages funds for the state including $300 billion in state pension funds.
Here are articles about the statewide comptroller race:
Fox 5 - brief summary about each candidate
City & State - compares the candidates
Thomas DiNapoli has held the office since 2007. He has longstanding support from labor unions across New York. He grew the state pension fund from $140 billion in 2007 to $295 billion today. He says it’s not the comptroller’s job to make political decisions with investments.
Endorsements: Dem establishment is behind him including Gov Kathy Hochul and Attorney General Letisha James.
Concerns: “DiNapoli has invested hundreds of millions of dollars from the state’s pension fund into the ICE-linked AI company Palantir, luxury real estate-funding private equity companies and Israel bonds – all of which have become controversial this primary cycle.” (from City & State)
Raj Goyle lists his background as defending immigrants and civil rights for the ACLU, and building businesses in the heartland (he’s a former Kansas lawmaker). His campaign has been very responsive and quickly gave us a certificate to allow our organization to observe the elections across the state. So, we were impressed with his efficiency.
He has a snazzy campaign video where he says that DiNapoli doesn’t own a computer and that DiNapoli’s assistant prints emails out for him. A progressive, he wants to divest the state’s retirement fund portfolio from Israel bonds and Palantir.
Endorsements: Representatives Ro Khanna and Pramila Jayapal, New York Communities for Change, Sunrise Movement NYC
Concerns: “Goyle does not have much experience in financial management besides starting his own business. That’s a far cry from managing a $300 billion dollar pension fund for over a million New Yorkers.” (from City & State)
Drew Warshaw is a former affordable housing executive & Port Authority official.
He starts his campaign by describing the job - which seems smart. His website says,
“What does the State Comptroller do? The fact that you don’t know is exactly what the incumbent wants. If you knew, you would wonder what he’s been doing for the last 20 years in Albany.”
His policy proposals are here. They include: investing in affordable housing, stop paying large investment fees to wall street brokers, divest from fossil fuels, support immigrant neighbors, and like DiNapoli emphasizes the effort to get unclaimed funds back to people.
Endorsements: Make the Road Action, Abundance New York, Assembly candidates Brian Romero and Lydia Green, IATSE Local 4
Concerns: Seemed unable to answer a basic question in the debate (20:10) about whether he supports Mayor Mamdani’s proposal to stretch out city pension payments an extra five years - called a gimmick by some.
Judge of the Civil Court
AM New York - Great article with details about both candidates
Michelle DeSouza - Says she started her own firm, because when she was pregnant, no one would hire here. She grew up in “an immigrant household in East Flatbush.” Endorsed by the Democratic establishment including Rodneyse Bichotte-Hermelynn, Brian Cunningham and Josue Pierre.
Janice Purvis - Vice president of her block association. She says she, “plans to bring the experience she’s had supporting self-represented litigants in the courtroom and the ‘sensitivity’ she’s developed in understanding backgrounds different from her own. ‘I can understand what it feels like for somebody to come into the courthouse not having an attorney.’” (from AM New York) Endorsed by the Working Families Party, and the Central Brooklyn Independent Democrats.
If you’re getting this email, but you don’t live in Tilder, you can find your polling location here:
https://findmypollsite.vote.nyc/
Get out there and vote!
Also - if you’re not registered, please get registered now, so you can vote in November or any upcoming primaries & special elections.
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Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.
~ Henry David Thoreau
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Thanks for the template and what you include for your neighbors. Our local town has a newsletter, and we plan to include voting information, so very helpful!
Democracy shouldn’t be a sport.