2 weeks Ago
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. — Residents of the South Shore City Council district will head to the polls Monday to elect their next City Councilmember.
Former Councilmember Joseph Borelli, a Republican, left office in February triggering the special election with Cliff Hagen, 58, Frank Morano, 40, and Griffin Fossella, 27, qualifying for the contest that will be decided April 29. Poll sites, which can be found on the Board of Election website , will be open Monday, and Tuesday from 12 p.m.
to 8 p.m.; on Wednesday to Friday from 8 a.
m. to 6 p.m.
; and on Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 5 p.
m. Election Day, Tuesday, April 29, will see poll sites opened from 6 a.m.
to 9 p.m. Voters will decide the race on a ranked-choice, non-partisan basis, meaning they’ll rank the three candidates and any possible write-ins in order of preference with no candidate appearing on traditional party lines.
A portion of a sample ballot is shown for the South Shore special election to be decided Tuesday, April 29, 2025. (Courtesy: New York City Board of Elections) The ranked-choice system, which passed as a ballot measure in 2019, has been used since 2021 with various agencies engaging in education efforts ahead of its implementation. Much of the voting system is in the name.
Voters will be asked to rank their top choice for the Council seat as they have done in recent municipal elections for offices like mayor, comptroller, borough president, and City Council. Voters do not need to rank all the candidates. In fact, if a voter only wants to make one selection, that’s fine.
Below are two illustrations showing acceptable fill-in examples of previous elections. One shows five candidates ranked one through five, and the other shows a voter who only wanted to rank three candidates. You do not have to assign all five rankings on your ballot.
(Staten Island Advance/Paul Liotta) You will be able to rank up to five candidates. (Staten Island Advance/Paul Liotta) What voters cannot do is assign multiple rankings to the same candidate, or multiple candidates to the same ranking. For example, voters cannot assign both first and second choice rankings in the special election to Morano, nor can they select both Hagen and Fossella as their first choice.
If you do give the same candidate multiple rankings, the later rankings will simply not be counted. If you give multiple candidates the same ranking, it is considered an “over vote,” and your vote in that rank and later ranks cannot be counted. Here are two examples of unacceptable ballots from previous elections.
The first shows multiple candidates with the same ranking, and the second shows one candidate with multiple rankings. You will not be able to assign multiple rankings to the same candidate. (Staten Island Advance/Paul Liotta) You will not be able to rank multiple candidates as the same choice.
(Staten Island Advance/Paul Liotta) How votes will be tallied is also largely found in the “ranked-choice” system’s name, and previous elections offer easy-to-understand illustrations of the count. All candidates have their first choice selections counted with the candidate receiving the lowest number eliminated. The first round typically sees write-in options eliminated, and first-choice write-in voters then have their second choice counted.
That process repeats itself until one of the candidates has more than 50% of the vote, thus being declared the winner. In 2019, New Yorkers were faced with five ballot questions — the first of which concerned changes to the city’s electoral system. The shift to ranked-choice represented the most significant change.
The proposals are a result of the state-authorized 2019 Charter Revision Commission that proposed the charter revisions. About 74% of voters said they were in favor of the changes on the ballot question. Staten Island was the only borough to vote against the change with about 54% against the changes.
The winner of the April 29 contest will serve out the remainder of Borelli’s term through the end of the year, but will need to win the June primary and November general elections to remain in office into 2026. Morano and Fossella, who is the son of Borough President Vito Fossella, have confirmed they plan to participate in the June Republican primary. Hagen has said he will be a candidate in the Democratic primary.
While traditional party lines will not appear in the special election, partisanship and political realities will undoubtedly play a part. The South Shore City Council seat is the city’s most conservative being held only by Republicans since its establishment in the 1990s, including the elder Fossella. Voters on the South Shore will also likely be familiar with special elections as their two most recent representatives in the City Council took office that way.
Borelli succeeded his predecessor — Vincent Ignizio, current deputy executive director of the New York City Board of Elections — after he left for a job at Catholic Charities of Staten Island in 2015. Ignizio took office in 2007 after his Council predecessor, Republican State Sen. Andrew Lanza, left for the State Senate.
more political news.
