The New York City Board of Elections released new numbers from the Democratic primary on Wednesday after it rescinded the results a day before because of a confounding tabulation error.
“Yesterday’s ranked-choice voting reporting error was unacceptable and we apologize to the voters and to the campaigns for the confusion,” the board said in a statement on Wednesday. “Let us be clear: [rank choice voting] was not the problem, rather a human error that could have been avoided.”
It was the city’s first foray into ranked-choice voting, which allowed voters to rank up to five candidates by preference, and by Tuesday evening the board thrust the race into a state of suspended animation after it acknowledged that 135,000 test ballots were accidentally included in the first initial report from the June 22 Democratic primary.
This prompted officials to remove preliminary numbers from the elections website hours after posting them. This happened, the board explained that evening, despite its “rigorous and mandatory pre-qualification testing” for every election.
Wednesday’s results appear to remain largely unchanged, with Eric Adams still in a tight race against former city sanitation chief Kathryn Garcia — roughly 51 percent to 49 percent, respectively.
However, Adams filed a lawsuit on Wednesday after the tabulation error.
“Today we petitioned the court to preserve our right to a fair election process and to have a judge oversee and review ballots, if necessary,” his campaign said in a statement. “We are notifying the other campaigns of our lawsuit through personal service, as required by law, because they are interested parties. We invite the other campaigns to join us and petition the court as we all seek a clear and trusted conclusion to this election.” (source: nbcnews.
