New York City Mayoral Race Count Voided After ‘Test’ Ballots Included in Tally; Board of Elections Says It Is a 'Discrepancy'

New York City Mayoral Candidate Eric Adams Holds Media Availability In Brooklyn

(Photo : Getty Images/Spencer Platt)
NEW YORK, NEW YORK - JUNE 24: Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams speaks to the media on June 24, 2021 in New York City. Adams, who ran on a tough-on-crime platform, emerged from Primary Day as the front runner in the Democratic mayoral primary with a nearly 10% lead over progressive attorney and activist Maya Wiley. New York City, and much of the nation, is witnessing a surge in violent gun crimes.

The New York City Board of Elections accidentally involved mock trial results of its new ranked-choice voting system in unofficial primary returns released on Tuesday. This is a disarray that threw the election process into tumult. Tallies released on Tuesday stated that Kathryn Garcia had come within 2.2 points of leading Democratic candidate Eric Adams following the processing of ranked-choice tabulations.

Eric Adams' lead in the mayoral race for the Democratic nomination of New York City narrowed to merely over two points, as indicated by preliminary tabulations from the Board of Elections in Round 11 of ranked-choice voting. However, the former police chief and Brooklyn Borough president is raising a number of questions. Adams currently leads the primary with 51.1% of the vote, barely edging out ex-sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia, who garnered 48.9% of the vote. The other candidates are now eliminated.

First Ranked-Choice Election

The city Board of Elections seemed to have botched the count during New York City's first ranked-choice election. It added 135,000 pre-election "test" ballots that had not been cleared from a computer. According to a BOE's statement on Tuesday evening, it has detected that ballot photos used for testing were not cleared from the Election Management System.

Shortly following the release of the results, campaign staffers and reporters noticed that there were estimated 135,000 more votes counted than votes reported on election evening. Three hours following the release of the numbers, the Board of Elections released a statement recognizing a "discrepancy" and subsequently took down the numbers from their website, reported Politico.

Adams led Garcia by 16,000 votes. However, 124,000 absentee ballots have yet to be counted. This means that the race is far from over. However, according to Adams, the vote total on Tuesday was 100,000 more than the numbers counted on the evening of the election.

BOE stated, "The Board apologizes for the error and has taken immediate measures to ensure the most accurate up to date results are reported," reported New York Post.

After 10:00 p.m., on Tuesday, the board eventually came clean with this statement: "test" ballots were not cleared out of the tabulation system and thus added the extra votes into the total numbers. The board remarked that it has removed all of the incorrect ballots from the count and will re-run the results. However, the date of readiness of the new rankings was still not clear.

According to Adams, "We are aware there is a discrepancy in the unofficial RCV round by round elimination report. We are working with our RCV technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred. We ask the public, elected officials and candidates to have patience," reported Fox News.

The preliminary results that were released previously in the day displayed a total of 941,832 ballots cast for mayor. This is an increase of over 140,000 from the 799,827 that were counted on June 22, the primary day.