The Garifuna Experience Podcast

Episode 53 Script: New York City Campaign Finance Board’s 2025 Voter Analysis Report

• Jose Francisco Avila • Episode 53

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In local New York City politics, the margin of victory in a City Council primary can often come down to fewer than 3,000 votes. Your vote isn't just a drop in the bucket—it is the deciding factor.

In this episode, host José Francisco Ávila breaks down the groundbreaking data from the New York City Campaign Finance Board’s (CFB) freshly released 2025 Voter Analysis Report. While NYC saw historic, record-breaking voter registration rates surpassing 94% and the highest general election turnout in over 50 years, a deeper look at the data reveals a persistent gap: voter turnout in the Bronx still lags behind the rest of the city at just 30.3%.

What is keeping our community from the ballot box, and how do we fix it? José discusses the restrictive, confusing deadlines of New York's closed primary system and highlights how Garifuna VOICE (Garifuna Voice Voting and Organizing to Increase Civic Engagement) is hit-the-ground running in the South Bronx Corridor. Tune in to learn how we are turning "occasional voters" into "habitual voters," engaging our youth and new citizens, and pushing for common-sense policy reforms to make voting accessible for everyone.

The future of our community is in our hands—and it is written on the ballot. Sungubei Lidan Aban (Together as one).

Key Takeaways From This Episode:

  • The 2025 Surge: How NYC surpassed a 94% voter registration rate and what drove 260,000 first-time voters to register.
  • The Turnout Gap: Why the Bronx recorded the lowest turnout (30.3%) despite citywide historic highs, and why the CFB has labeled the South Bronx a "priority community district."
  • Navigating the Deadlines: A breakdown of NYC's confusing voter deadlines (including the February 14th party enrollment cutoff) and the CFB's recommendation to align them.
  • Garifuna VOICE in Action: How our nonpartisan civic empowerment campaign is targeting the South Bronx Corridor to build long-term political power.

Resources:

Books by José Francisco Ávila

Soundtrack

I. Intro

HOST: Welcome back to The Garifuna Experience Podcast. I am your host, José Francisco Ávila. 

Today, we are diving into a crucial roadmap for our advocacy: the New York City Campaign Finance Board’s 2025 Voter Analysis Report. This report gives us a direct look at how New Yorkers registered, engaged, and participated over the past year.

More importantly, it shows us exactly where we need to focus our energy to make sure our voices are heard.

II. The Power of the CFB and the Surge in Numbers

HOST: For those who may not know, the New York City Campaign Finance Board (CFB) is a nonpartisan, independent city agency. Its sole mission is to empower New Yorkers to participate more meaningfully in our elections.

Through its NYC Votes initiative, the Campaign Finance Board reaches out to our communities with Voter Guides, community partnerships, multilingual materials, paid advertisements, youth programs, and citywide debate programs.

And in 2025, the impact was undeniable. Let’s look at the numbers:

  •  Record-Breaking Registration: More than 5.3 million New Yorkers were registered to vote in 2025. That is a registration rate of 94.3%—up nearly 9 percentage points from 2024. It is the first time our city has surpassed a 90% registration rate since 2021.
  • A New Wave of Voters: New registrations more than doubled compared to 2021. Over 260,000 people registered for the first time, reaching levels we typically only see in presidential election years.
  • Beating the Clock: Registration spiked sharply right before eligibility deadlines. In fact, 16,505 people registered on the very last day before the primary cutoff—more than five times the single-day record set in 2021.

III. Bridging the Gap: Priority Communities & The South Bronx

HOST: Now, this is where our work gets specific. While these citywide numbers are encouraging, the New York City Campaign Finance Board places a special focus on empowering New Yorkers who are historically less likely to vote.

Guided by its charter mandate, the Campaign Finance Board periodically analyzes data to identify priority communities and priority community districts—the demographic and geographic groups that remain underrepresented in terms of engagement, registration, and turnout.

According to the 2025 report, these priority groups include:

  • Voters under the age of 30
  • Immigrant voters
  • Voters who primarily speak a language other than English
  • Voters with disabilities
  • Voters directly impacted by the criminal legal system

Geographically, the Campaign Finance Board identified priority community districts with large concentrations of these voters using U.S. Census and turnout data. These include specific neighborhoods in the South Bronx, South Brooklyn, Northern Queens, and Central Queens.

Voter Registration

Whenn it comes to Voter registration, the 2025 numbers show that The Bronx had the lowest registration rate at 92.1%. Bronx CD 3 & 6 (Morrisania-Crotona Park East-Tremont-Belmont-West Farms), were at the bottom of the Campaign Finance Board priority community districts.

Voter Turnout

When it comes to voter turnout, the 2025 numbers show both progress and a persistent gap:

  • Citywide, primary turnout rose to 29.9%, up from 26.5% in 2021. However, the Bronx recorded the lowest turnout at 20.6%
  • General election turnout reached 41.6%—meaning 2.2 million New Yorkers cast their ballots. That is the highest turnout in a New York City local election in over 50 years. 
  • Manhattan led the boroughs with 48.5% turnout.
  • However, the Bronx recorded the lowest turnout at 30.3%.

This is why Garifuna VOICE is focusing heavily on the priority community districts of the South Bronx Corridor. The data shows us that local democracy is vibrant, but communities in the South Bronx and East Brooklyn still lag well behind citywide averages.

We are using this precise electoral data to reach out to those who haven't voted in years and bring them back into the fold, while actively registering first-time voters, including our youth and new citizens. 

We are turning "occasional voters" into "habitual voters." We want our community to know the date of a local primary as clearly as they know Independence Day.

IV. Policy Reforms and Breaking Down the Deadlines

HOST: To close these gaps, the Campaign Finance Board makes annual recommendations to improve participation. Some of these are already in motion. For instance, the Civic Engagement Fellowship—first recommended in 2023—launched in August 2025 as a two-year pilot program in partnership with CUNY. It matches CUNY students with 14 Bronx-based community organizations to build local leadership

However, a major barrier remains: New York’s restrictive primary deadlines.

New York is one of only ten states with closed primaries. This means you must be registered with a political party to vote in that party’s primary election. To make matters more complicated, New York currently forces voters to manage three separate deadlines:

Deadline Type | Current Rule | The Impact 

  • Change of Party Enrollment | February 14 | Already-registered voters must change their party over four months before the June primary—long before the candidates are even finalized.
  • Change of Address | 15 daysbefore Election Day | Deadline for registered voters to update their name or address.
  • New Voter Registration | 10 daysbefore Election Day | Deadline for first-time registrants. It falls exactly on the first day of in-person early voting.

Because of this confusing timeline, the CFB has a critical recommendation: Align the party enrollment and change of address deadlines with the new voter registration deadline. Let's make it simple. If you can register as a new voter ten days before the election, you should be able to change your party or update your address at that same moment. Simplifying the rules means increasing the vote.

V. Moving Forward: The Power of Your Vote

 

HOST: The 2025 election cycle demonstrated that our local democracy is healthy, resilient, and capable of engaging voters at historic levels. The matching funds program worked as intended to support diverse candidates, new voters participated at record levels, and registration broke through the ceiling.

 

But this moment isn't just a time to celebrate; it is a clear opportunity to push for the reforms that make voting easier for everyone.

Our future is built on our participation. We are living in a moment where the principles of an inclusive democracy are being tested, some might even say they are under assault. 

Now we know exactly where we need to focus our energy to make sure our voices are heard.

Let’s Mobilize! Check your voter registration status. Vote in the upcoming New York Primary Election on June 23.  Use the hashtag #GarifunaVote.

VI. Outro 

HOST: That wraps up another episode of The Garifuna Experience Podcast. Thank you for joining the movement. Remember, the future of our people is in our hands—and it is written on the ballot. 

Until next time: stay united, stay proud. Sungubei Lidan Aban. (Together as one.) Ayo!

HOST: Find new episodes every Tuesday on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or wherever you get your shows. 

Please rate and review—it helps our history and our message reach the world.

Soundtrack


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José Francisco Ávila

Host