At the historic Andrew Freedman Home in the Bronx, one of two early voting sites in the special election for a Bronx Assembly seat voters were scarce Friday.

NY1 saw just three people cast ballots in the space of about an hour.

By the city Board of Elections’ own tally, just 166 people have turned out over the first seven days of early voting. That averages out to just 24 voters a day in a district with 64,000 active registered voters.

It surely did not help that Gov. Kathy Hochul issued a proclamation on Jan. 12 setting the election for barely a month later, then did little to publicize the announcement.

Former Assemblywoman Latoya Joyner abruptly resigned Jan. 4, just as the legislative session was getting underway.

The race for the 77th district, which includes neighborhoods like Concourse, Highbridge and Morris Heights, features Democrat Landon Dais, an attorney long active in politics who once ran for a Harlem City Council seat, versus Republican Norman McGill, a tenant leader at NYCHA’s Highbridge Houses.

McGill said the short notice has depressed turnout.

“The governor didn’t pretty much make a big announcement about it. So I think that deterred a lot of people,” McGill told NY1 in an interview. “So it’s one of the things that’s killing a lot our people: lack of knowledge.”

A low-information, low-turnout election would presumably help Democrats, who make up 77% of registered voters in the district. But Dais says a quick election also benefits residents.

“The quick turnaround was for the community,” he said, “so that we have someone in the seat to represent the 77th during the budget hearings, to make sure funding is going to our schools, funding is going to our parks.”

With poll workers outnumbering voters, some might question the need for nine days of early voting, which wraps up Sunday in advance of Tuesday’s special election.

But voting rights advocate Jarret Berg said that view misses the point.

“It’s easy in a special like this, where you have a fairly noncompetitive seat that is not going to impact the super-majority in Albany, and to hold that up and say, ‘Well, maybe we don’t need early voting,’” said Berg, co-founder of the voting rights organization VoteEarlyNY.

But, he said, “look at what happened in 2020 in the city with long lines even during early voting, or 2018 on election day when you had rainstorm, ballots sticking together, thousands of people disenfranchised.”