Eric Adams sues over 135,000 ‘test ballots’ added to NYC mayoral race count amid botched primary election scandal
The New York City Democratic primaries were characterized by a dumpster fire of abnormalities and apparent fraud, as observers wondered why a city couldn’t get done what a whole country could have years ago.
New York City’s primary election, the Democrats’ first ranked-choice vote for mayor, council-members and borough presidents, was supposed to have learned from the mistakes of 2020’s primaries and put that information into practice. Instead, well, the city got this.
The night mayoral election results were supposed to be released, the current frontrunner, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, actually stepped up to remark that his apparent lead was based on there being more voters listing him as their first choice than there actually were in the city.
Adams pointed out on Wednesday night that his lead of 51.1% over apparent runner-up Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner who had 48.9% of ballots to her name, was mathematically impossible, with 125,000 absentee ballots still uncounted. Garcia fans cried foul – even though those 125,000 ballots could have sent their candidate to City Hall. Instead, a horde of naysayers compared Adams’ questioning to former US President Donald Trump, whose own complaints about irregularities at the ballot box in November have continued to this day.
The results of the city’s election were supposed to be released on June 30, but someone got their panties in a bunch – as seems to have become typical in a country where everyone works from home in their underwear.
Alleged “test” ballots included in the total led to more than 135,000 more votes being cast in New York City than the number of people who’d actually voted. It took three hours for the Board of Elections to discover the “glitch” and the city subsequently acknowledged the “discrepancy” only after reporters had pointed it out to them.
That wasn’t the worst of it, though – the “test” ballots weren’t actually taken out of the total tabulation system after they were discovered, meaning they were included in the total vote counts anyway. Oops.
While the faux ballots were finally removed on Tuesday night, replaced by a statement of apology and a promise to release the correct numbers on Wednesday, no new numbers have yet been forthcoming. Just in case anyone wasn’t left completely hopeless about the possibility of democracy in New York functioning ever again, while the full tally of in-person votes is expected Thursday night, the complete set of results, including absentee voters, is not expected until the week of July 12 “at the earliest,” according to NewsMax.
Democrats have described ranked-choice voting as a fairer and more democratic system, as it allows voters to list their runner-up choices in case their primary contender doesn’t win. However, in typical New York fashion, the city’s version of this new system requires candidates to file any legal grievances before Friday, even though they may not be aware of fraud or other issues for weeks, attorney Jerry Goldfeder told Politico. Essentially, if anyone wants to sue, they’d have to start the process now – and given the preliminary results even with 124,000 absentee votes outstanding as of late Tuesday night, a lot of people are going to want to sue.
Staggering, 2020 Dem Iowa Caucus-level incompetence from the NYC Board of Elections amidst a new and promising ranked-choice rollout. https://t.co/ie3OAt5GnF
New Yorkers were dumbfounded at how their elections had become national news for the second year in a row, and the younger Donald couldn't help but notice the bizarre clairvoyance exhibited by the Washington Post in its prediction that the city’s “ranked choice voting” would crash and burn.
Others worried (or, perhaps, rejoiced) that the failure would merely feed the fire for Trump and his offspring as they continue to contest the vote from November.
Let me get this straight? You can be off by 135,000 votes in a New York City mayoral primary alone but if someone loses the White House by less than 45,000 across multiple states in a presidential election you can’t have any questions.
Thanks, NYC Board of Elections, for proving Trump was right about the unreliability of American elections. (Longer-term question: What happens to a democracy when it can no longer hold elections w outcomes anyone can trust?)
Not that they haven't got a history of doing the same thing…
@chrislhayes, who suggested that the previous president might be a Manchurian candidate put there by Putin, would like you all to stop believing conspiracies about elections now. pic.twitter.com/8659Oxbgel
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