Just as Memorial Day marks the unofficial start to the summer, February 25 is the official kickoff of New York City’s primary campaign of 2025. In every borough across the City, an army of clipboard holders will fan across districts seeking thousands of signatures required to formally nominate candidates for the June 2025 New York City Primary ballot.
Since New York has a closed primary system, meaning only members of the Democratic or Republican political parties can choose their nominees in June for November’s election, you are unable to sign any of their petitions if you are not registered to vote as a Democrat or Republican.
Each candidate’s campaign must ask voters to sign a designating petition, which is the official nominating form that can allow a candidate access to a political party ballot line. By signing, you are committing yourself to support a single candidate per race seeking elected office.
You can sign different petitions for mayor and city council, for example, as long as you are only signing for one mayoral candidate total and one city council candidate total. In addition to only signing one petition per candidate, per race, in order to sign a petition in the first place there are five key things to know before you sign:
- You may only sign in blue or black ink for your signature to count.
- You must be registered to vote in New York City.
- You must be registered to vote in the party of the candidate – so as a Democrat or a Republican. Unaffiliated voters, independents, Conservative or Working Families Party members cannot sign petitions.
- For City Council, Borough President, and District Attorney signatures, you must be registered to vote as a Democrat or Republican in the district the candidate is running in.
The information you provide along with your signature must match the information in your voter registration (address and signature) but you do not need to show identification to sign.
Once all of that information is validated and confirmed, and you are ready to sign, please keep in mind that each candidate needs a minimum number of signatures in order to qualify for the primary ballot:
Candidates typically want up to three times the number of signatures required, especially in hotly contested races, to sustain the common practice of legal petition challenges. The general rule of thumb is that they want enough of a buffer to withstand a sustained legal challenge to their ballot access.
A few more key points to remember:
- Political clubs are likely to carry petitions for multiple offices at once.
- Make sure you read every petition and know who you are signing for before you sign!
- If you make a mistake, cross out the full line (even if parts are blank) and sign and put the full corrected information on the line below.
- Petitioning will be from February 25 through April 3.
- Petition signatures can be challenged up to three daysafter the petition was filed.
- The sooner a candidate can file their petitions, the better – ballot placement is determined by the date a campaign files its petitions.
- Petitions are not available online for review, but you can go down to the board of elections and review any petition you would like to review.
- If you have any questions, call 1-866-VOTE-NYC