Under the provisions of the New York Constitution of 1777, the State Senators were elected on general tickets in the senatorial districts, and were then divided into four classes.

Assemblymen were elected countywide on general tickets to a one-year term, the whole assembly being renewed annually.

On May 8, 1777, the Constitutional Convention had appointed the senators from the Southern District, and the assemblymen from Kings, New York, Queens, Richmond and Suffolk counties—the area which was under British control—and determined that these appointees serve in the Legislature until elections could be held in those areas, presumably after the end of the American Revolutionary War.

Assemblyman Elkanah Day, from Cumberland County, which had seceded from New York to become a part of the Vermont Republic, was elected in the Eastern District.

[1] The State Legislature met first in Poughkeepsie, the seat of Dutchess County, on September 7, 1780, and adjourned on October 10.