Fact Check: Did a New York City voter get a ballot without conservative candidates?
NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK: As voters head to the polls for the 2026 midterm elections, claims about voting problems are spreading on social media. One viral video claims that a voter at a New York City polling site received a ballot that did not list conservative candidates.
The post has raised questions about whether voters are receiving complete ballots. But did the polling site really leave conservative candidates off the ballot? Let's take a closer look at the claim.
Claim: NYC gave a voter two ballots without conservative candidates
What is happening in NYC?!! Woman who decided to vote early in NYC claims she received not one, but two ballots, and is warning others to pay attention. “The first ballot had five columns featuring Conservative, Republican, Independent, Working Families, and Democratic candidates as it supposed to. The second ballot, however, listed only Democratic candidates. I take the ballot that has all the candidates, which should be 5 columns. It should be Democrat, which I don't know why that one was the first one, then Republican, then Conservative, then Working Families, and I think the Independent column. So, the ballot that was complete, with all those columns that I just named, I filled that ballot out. I filled in Conservative all the way down. So obviously, the other ballot that they gave to me was a phony ballot. It was literally just the Democratic Party column and the Working Families column. They're betting on you not even reading what you're signing, bro.”
— I Meme Therefore I Am 🇺🇸 (@ImMeme0) October 24, 2026
The claim that a New York City polling site gave a voter two ballots, with one missing conservative candidates, originated in a TikTok video.
The woman who posted the video said in the comments that she voted at the Borough of Manhattan Community College in New York City.
In the video, the woman claims that election officials are giving voters incomplete ballots and hope they will not notice. She says, “They’re betting on your stupidity, and they’re betting on your ignorance that you are not going to see that they’re giving you a ballot that is missing half the candidates.”
She then adds, “That’s actually some real foolery and real trickery right there. So honestly, wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up.”
The woman also points out that New York City has used multi-page ballots for many years. She raises another concern, saying that poll workers did not ask her to show identification before she voted.
Fact Check: The claim is misleading
The claim is misleading. The sample ballot for Borough of Manhattan Community College contains two double-sided pages.
One side of the second page lists judicial races with no conservative candidates running. This does not mean the voter received an incomplete or altered ballot.
Kathleen McGrath, a spokesperson for the New York State Board of Elections, explained that a party may not have a candidate listed for a particular office if it did not nominate anyone for that race.
“The only reason there would be no candidate on a party line in a contest on the ballot is that no individual was nominated by that party for that particular office,” McGrath wrote in an email.
She added that every contest includes a space for write-in candidates, allowing voters to choose someone whose name does not appear on the ballot.
McGrath also explained that voters may only need to verify their identity with a signature at the polling site if election officials have already verified their additional identification, such as a photo ID. Two bipartisan poll workers then review and approve the signature to make sure it matches the voter's registration record.
McGrath also warned that misleading information about elections often spreads quickly online. “Unfortunately, much misinformation and disinformation about elections and voting spreads quickly online,” she wrote.
She added that some social media users post such claims to attract attention or clicks without considering their accuracy or impact. In other cases, people may simply misunderstand the voting process.
She said New York's elections operate securely and transparently under bipartisan supervision and encouraged voters to rely on their local boards of elections for accurate information.
