Mayor Mamdani Casts His Ballot at the Met Museum in New Voting Video

New York City Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani voted at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on the first day of early voting — and posted a video to prove it took five minutes.

In the clip, shared on social media ahead of a hotly contested midterm cycle that includes a heated New York State gubernatorial race, Mamdani walks through the Met's recently refurbished Rockefeller Wing, home to its collections of art from Africa, Oceania, and the Americas. An "I Voted 2026" sticker sits on his chest.

"Only in New York City can you vote in places like the Metropolitan Museum of Art," Mamdani says in the video.

The mayor pauses before Seated Elder (200 BCE–300 CE), a fragmented ceramic figure by an artist from the pre-Columbian Tolita-Tumaco people, and asks whether the figure has voted. The joke lasts seconds. Then Mamdani turns to practical information, an effort to counter misinformation about the voting process.

His points in the video:

• Voting is "easy and safe."
• Voters do not need to bring identification or anything else to cast a ballot.
• ICE and other armed federal agents cannot be present at voting sites without a signed warrant.

What does this change for voters?

The Met is one of several New York City institutions serving as an early voting site and an election-day polling place. Others include the American Museum of Natural History on the Upper West Side, the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, and the Brooklyn Museum. Mamdani closes the video with the dates voters need: early voting runs until Sunday, November 1, and election day falls on Tuesday, November 3. New Yorkers can find their polling site and a sample ballot at vote.nyc.

"Voting is your fundamental right," Mamdani concludes. "No one, especially the government, can stand in the way of New Yorkers exercising it. See you at the polls."

A mayor building an arts record

The video fits a pattern. Mamdani has made arts funding a signature commitment of his administration, and the numbers back the rhetoric. The 2027 city budget gave the Department of Cultural Affairs $323.8 million, the largest allocation in its history. He also created the Cultural Stability Fund, which earmarks $10 million over three years to stabilize arts and culture nonprofits across the city.

His announcements often arrive in the same format as the Met tour. To publicize the doubling of individual artist grants to $10,000, he posted a video in which he and cultural affairs commissioner Diya Vij each painted a canvas — hers a realistic still life, his two green dollar signs on an unprimed canvas.

Earlier this month, for his birthday, he visited the Studio Museum in Harlem, where Taylor Simmons's 2026 painting The Hypnotist left an impression on him. The Met video extends that record into electoral politics, framing the city's museums as civic infrastructure rather than passive backdrops — and with election day on November 3, the pairing of ballot boxes and galleries is set to reach its widest audience yet.