Your 2025 voting guide
How to look up if you've got an election, tips for researching candidates, & my thoughts on the NYC election
Fun fact: There are over 30,000 candidates on the ballot on November 4th, plus dozens of ballot measures and referendums. Despite what you may think, there are no off years in our democracy — every year is an election year. (Hell, in my day job, nearly every Tuesday is an election day!)
To help you through this, I’ve put together a quick guide on how to look up whether you can vote this fall, how to research who to vote for, some specific recs in VA, NJ, & CA, and then my opinions on the NYC elections and how I’ll be voting.
(I’ll say it again, for the record: This is all my personal positions — RFS has more than 250 candidates up this November; those are who the org is supporting! We don’t take positions on ballot referendums or specific issues.)
A step-by-step guide on how to look up if you can vote & if so, who to vote for…
Here’s what you do right now:
Look up if you can vote this year (if you haven’t already seen the campaigning going on)! Ballotready is a great resource for this — you can enter your address and see what your ballot will look like. You can also search the League of Women Voters Education Fund’s tool at Vote411.org.
Make a plan to vote. Literally: Put it on your calendar. Make it an unmissable event. If you can vote early, do it, but make sure to confirm your early-vote location (which may be different than your normal Election Day polling place — mine is!).
If you’re going to leave it until Election Day on 11/4, all the more power to you, but make sure you know where you’re going, what time polls open and close, and that you’ve got the time needed to get there and then get on with your day.
If you’ve planned to vote absentee and your ballot is sitting on your counter, go fill it out and put it in the mail.
A thing I didn’t quite connect the dots on until my kid was in public school: Election Day means school’s closed, which means for my fellow parents, confirm you’ve got plans for your kids vis a vis voting. In 2024 I brought the baby in her carrier with me to vote and wept into her soft little 6 week old head as I cast my ballot for Kamala. (I blame the hormones.)Do some research. Yes, this requires work from you. Deal with it. Democracy isn’t a spectator sport. It won’t take very long!
You can try asking a chatbot who to vote for if you want, but be forewarned: Based on our initial research, depending on how you phrase the question and what sources the LLM was trained on, you’re going to run into some guardrails and it will be hard to get an answer. (As an aside: This is going to be a huge problem for campaigns moving forward; Run for Something is working on some solutions! Email me if you want to invest!)
Search the candidate. See what party they’re in. If that’s all you need to know, great. Totally reasonable way to make a decision in a general election!
If you need to know more or can’t find a partisan affiliation, check out the candidate’s website and social media. Take a look and see who’s endorsed them, both other electeds and organizations. Check to see what issues they’ve talked about or posted the most. See what the local paper (if it still exists, sigh) has said or if they’ve made endorsements. Look for context clues.
It’s okay if this takes you a few minutes! This person will be responsible for things like how much your home costs, how good your schools are, how safe your water is to drink and how much backbone your community has against Trump. A few minutes of internet-ing is the least you can do.
For ballot measures and referendums, check the most local newspaper or media outlet you can find. At this point, they’ve probably made recommendations and explained them. Try to find a few sources if you can to get a sense of the conventional wisdom.
If you want to dig a little deeper, do an internet search on who’s funding the campaigns behind them. The relationship between money and ballot referendum tends to be pretty clear-cut.If you’ve really done your research and gotten a kick out of it, put together a quick voting guide for your friends and family. Email it, or text it, or share it on social media. Create the content you wish to see in the world. There is no downside to being “wrong” here; the worst thing that happens is that someone ignores you; the best thing that happens is you helped make it easier for someone else to vote.
Vote! Post about that, too! Share your sticker with the world. One of my hotter takes is that in many cases, virtue signaling is good because it encourages other people to be virtuous (whether by shaming them or reminding them — either way.)
For NJ, VA, & CA voters in particular:
If you’re in New Jersey or Virginia: You have big elections! Mikie Sherrill in NJ and Abigail Spanberger in VA are both in competitive races for governor; both would be great executives. Both states are also electing their state houses; in Virginia, Democrats have a chance to win an even bigger majority than our current 3 seat margin. We need to win these.
If you’re in California: You can say “fuck you” to Trump by voting yes on Prop 50!
Earlier this spring, Trump and Texas Republicans orchestrated an unprecedented power grab by redrawing the congressional maps to essentially rig the election and win five additional GOP seats in the U.S. House. Prop 50 allows for California to fight back by redrawing its own maps in such a way that would essentially neutralize the GOP’s bullshit in Texas until the next normally scheduled redistricting process after the 2030 Census.
Is gerrymandering bullshit and wildly unfair? Yeah, 100%. But the GOP isn’t playing fair and this isn’t the time for unilateral disarming when they’re kidnapping people off the streets. Vote YES on Prop 50 and tell all your Californians to do the same.
For NYC voters…
Go vote for Zohran Mamdani!!
I am genuinely impressed by and excited to vote for Zohran Mamdani for mayor.
Over the last three months, I’ve seen him speak a number of times in person, listened to or read many many interviews he’s done, and read all the various profiles of him. (My favorites include this interview with Wired, the recent NYT profile by Astead Herndon, and the profile in Time magazine by Mark Chiusano.)
He is thoughtful, genuine, and deeply passionate about New York City — unlike Cuomo or Adams, Mamdani seems to love this place, flaws and all. He doesn’t see this city as a hellhole to fix or be scared of; he sees it simply as a home we can make better together.
His commitment to his core issues — housing, transportation, and childcare — have stayed steadfast, while he’s expanded his openness to new ideas on how to fund them and execute on them. That’s what I want: Strict on values and clear on goals; flexible on strategies and tactics.
I've loved watching his outreach to people who disagree with him and people who didn’t support him in the primary. That’s good coalition building and good politics, which is what the mayor needs in order to get things done.
I’m a Jewish New Yorker who brings my kids to synagogue nearly every Saturday. I have had lots of conversations with people who feel anxious or otherwise about the prospect of a Mayor Mamdani.
I do not share their fear in the slightest — but I understand they come from a real emotional place, and beyond that, it’s clear that Cuomo and others are weaponizing that anxiety and trying to stoke it for their political gain, as
aptly describes in her essay after the primary.Like her, I don’t think Zohran is anti-semitic. And I am confident that he is a good enough politician to understand that incentives are such that any mayor who wants to win re-election is going to have to prove they’re good for the Jewish community in all the ways that matter. If he doesn’t, well, he’ll face electoral consequences.
But if we’re being real here, I genuinely don’t care in the slightest about my mayor’s opinion on foreign affairs (although I appreciate his commitment to his values and that he refuses to pander.)
I care that he’s going to at the very least try to make this city more affordable. Even if he doesn’t fulfill his promises, he’s going to pull every possible lever he can within city government to make this a place I can stay and raise my family.
His win matters for national political purposes, as I wrote about at length earlier this spring (TLDR: we need to make NYC more affordable or our population loss will fuck us in the electoral college).
It also matters that Andrew Cuomo, scum of the earth who should be banished to the suburbs until the end of time, loses big time.
Cuomo and everyone surrounding or enabling him needs to see in real time that their way of leadership and of politics has no place in New York City or the future of the Democratic Party.
He is a bad person who has done bad things and would not only fail to govern effectively if he won (which he won’t) but his leadership would actively cause harm to New Yorkers. Fuck that guy.
Right now, it looks pretty good for Zohran. But the margin of victory makes a difference in the narrative and whether or not he walks in with a mandate to get things done. Your vote matters.
I’ll be voting for Mamdani on the Working Families Party line, because WFP is great and it still counts for him, no matter which bubble next to his name you fill in.
Also: Vote yes on the ballot referendums!!
NYC has six ballot referendums to consider this fall.
The first is about an Olympic Sports Complex upstate; I have no opinions on that.
Proposals 2, 3, and 4 are all about making it easier to build more affordable housing. Gothamist has a great explainer on the proposals and why they matter, as does The City.
Read all the details if you want. If you simply want to trust me: I’ll be voting yes on all these because right now, among other solutions, NYC needs to build more housing ASAP.
The City Council has been sending a ton of (possibly illegal?) mailers against the proposals because from their perspective, the changes would undermine the council’s power.
I think this is a feature, not a bug. Right now, individual city councilmembers can kill new housing in their districts, usually in response to community boards or individual criticism — that has led to wildly inequitable development with some (usually wealthier) communities building basically no new units in the last few years.
The housing crisis is too urgent to let egos or local cranks have the final say in how we solve it (and if you’ve ever been to a community board meeting, you know what I mean.) Time to try something new.
Proposal 5 is to create a new digitized unified city map. This feels like a no-brainer; I’ll be voting yes. Wild we have to vote on shit like this!
Proposal 6 moves local elections to even-numbered years. I’ll be voting yes on this, too. It’ll help increase voter turnout and save the city money. It won’t take effect immediately because it requires a constitutional amendment so the state legislature has to vote affirmatively on it in two consecutive sessions, then go to a statewide ballot, but this is a good first step.
Why these elections matter
These elections are the first big electoral moment to prove that the GOP’s actions have consequences. The bigger the margins, the higher the turn out, the more we show up big time, the more scared they’ll be.
Plus, winning begets winning. To win in November 2025 helps build our muscle for winning in November 2026. I have seen in personal experience how winning inspires people to step up and run for office, or move money to campaigns and organizations, or get involved in a new way because they see what might be possible.
Elections are not the only way to make a difference. (I have a list of 51-ish things you can do, most of which are not electoral!) But they’re a necessary part of the process. Voting is quite literally what democracy looks like, and I’d like to keep our democracy if we can.
Let me know in the comments if you have questions or thoughts. Here to help!
Pick up a copy of When We’re in Charge in any format you’d like — hardcover, e-book, or audio book (narrated by yours truly) anywhere you get books, including Amazon or Bookshop.org or literally anywhere else. If you have Spotify Premium, you can listen to for free right this very minute.
Another option: Get your book along with an excellent I DO NOT DREAM OF LABOR tote bag at the Crooked Media shop.
"He doesn’t see this city as a hellhole to fix or be scared of; he sees it simply as a home we can make better together." - wouldn't it be great if every candidate saw where they represented in this same light? How refreshing!
This is so great! I always struggle to find helpful info about judges or delegates in NYC. Do you have any resources you like for those down ballot races?