Clearly, the big political event this year is the scrum for mayor of Buffalo, between incumbent Byron Brown and challenger India Walton. However, the first weekend of early voting doesn't show that, instead showing fewer than a quarter of early ballots were cast in Buffalo.
There are more days of early voting, leading up to Nov. 2, the formal Election Day. By the end of Sunday, nearly 7,800 ballots had been cast early, with just over 1,600 cast in the city.
Some of this might reflect hot suburban races, like in Amherst, Hamburg and the Town of Tonawanda. A visit to the Kenmore Municipal Building showed a slow but steady stream of voters. One was Kenmore Village Trustee Paul Catalano, showing up to cast his own ballot, including his own name for re-election.
"Just in case of inclement weather or anything like that," Catalano said. "My wife and I figured we would just take a walk down and vote today."
Also in Kenmore was Sean Beiter, who said the public can get interested in a hot local race.
"People are excited about contested elections in general and it's going to bring out people from both parties in like non-presidential years," Beiter said.
Over at Buffalo's Delavan Grider Community Center, Laureen Nichols said she had a very specific reason for voting Sunday.
"Because I was getting ready to have surgery," Nichols said. "So I came out to vote before I have surgery. My surgery is next month, like on the 3rd. So I came out."
Mohammed Osman said he was voting because it's important to his Bangladeshi community.
"We organized," Osman said. "My communities have 55,000 people in Buffalo. It's the Bengali community. We want to make sure that people they know they have the first right of citizens. The first right is voting."
Miss Katie said people of color pay a lot of attention to voting because they were barred from voting for so long.
"It's important that people of color get out and vote because a lot of us feel that our vote doesn't matter," she said. "But in reality it matters a lot. Every vote matters. And the more of us that get out and vote and let our voice be heard, the more power you give yourself. You empower yourself more. So I just feel that this right here election is going to be something different (laughs), very different."
There were a lot of people offering suggestions outside as to who to vote for. Mark Brown was fascinated by one of the back side of the ballot issues.
"I flipped it over and answered a couple of questions on the back, one of them which I do not understand," Brown said. "The question was, Do you think air and water should be clean? That was the question. I think that's a no-brainer."
There are five ballot propositions on this year's ballot. Early voting continues through 6 p.m. Sunday in Erie County, with polling places across the county.
