Chaos as New York admits 135,000-ballot 'discrepancy' in mayoral primary

New York City's mayor's race was thrown into chaos on Tuesday after the city's Board of Elections (BOE) after mistaking including 135,000 ‘test' votes in records.

Earlier on Tuesday, the City's Board of Elections unveiled new statistics suggesting that Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adam's lead over former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia has shrank from nearly 10 percentage points to a 2 percentage point lead.

Several hours later, however, the Board of Elections tweeted that "we are aware there is a discrepancy in the unofficial RCV [Ranking Choice Voting] round-by-round elimination report."

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"We are working with our RCV technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred," the tweet added. "We ask the public, elected officials and candidates to have patience."

The Board of Elections announcement came after the Adams campaign said in a statement that the initial results "100,000-plus more than the total announced on election night, raising serious questions."

"We have asked the Board of Elections to explain such a massive increase and other irregularities," the statement said "We remain confident that Eric Adams will be the next mayor of New York."

Many Adams supporters had already been critical of the ranked-choice voting process, which some described as an attempt to disenfranchise Black and Latino voters.

A subsequent and more detailed statement from the BOE accidently included a large number of ‘test ballots' used to for pre-election testing of the election management system (EMS), producing approximately 135,000 "additional records."

The announcement was quickly condemned by the city's mayoral candidates.

Adams, for example, said that the mistake was "unfortunate."

"It is critical that new Yorkers are confident in their electoral system, especially as we rank votes in a citywide election for the first time," he added.

An LPO source with inside knowledge of the Adams campaign - but who asked to remain anonymous - said that campaign staffers were "furious" about the BOE error.

"It was very obvious early on that there was something wrong here," the source said. "Everyone is still confident Adams will ultimately be declared the winner, but this is unnecessary chaos when the results still aren't official. It's not helpful."

Katheryn Garcia - who is Adams' closest competitor after Andrew Yang conceded defeat last week - said that the error poses a serious problem for New Yorkers, who overwhelmingly voted to enact ranked choice voting."

"The Board of Elections release of incorrect ranked choice votes is deeply troubling and requires a much more transparent and complete explanation," she added. "Every ranked choice and absentee vote must be counted accurately so that all New Yorkers have faith in our democracy and our government."

The BOE has yet to reveal how the erroneous votes were re-allocated during ranked-choice tabulations, making it difficult to determine what impact the test ballots had on the initial results.

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Many of New York's Latino voters expressed dismay at the incident.

"After [the Presidential elections in] 2020, lots of people are already wondering about elections and whether they are fair or not," Brooklyn resident Vicente Cotilla told LPO.

"This really doesn't help that situation. But it's good the BOE was transparent with their mistake," he added. "Still, we'll have to wait and see how things play out."

While the BOE has vowed to re-calculate the results and has apologized for the error, it remains unclear when those updated results will be released.