#NYC’s online mail-in ballot registration is officially open

The city’s embattled Board of Elections opened up online registration to receive absentee ballots for the November election on Friday, allowing Big Apple residents to quickly register to vote by mail as the coronavirus pandemic rolls on.

The move comes a day after Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed a package of legislation that allowed voters to use the COVID-19 outbreak as a qualifying reason to receive an absentee ballot.

Additionally, the newly minted laws also bar the Board of Elections from tossing absentee ballots simply because they do not have a postmark, provided the post office delivers them by Nov. 4 — the day after the election.

The bills were passed by lawmakers in Albany after the city Board of Elections bungled absentee voting during the June primaries by mailing ballots to voters late and disqualifying roughly one in five ballots it got back.

Thousands of ballots were disqualified because they were not stamped by the post office as having been mailed by election day for the June primaries, even though the Board of Elections had received them beforehand.

Elected officials in Albany and at City Hall described the BOE’s performance as “appalling.”