NEW YORK (WCBS 880) — New York City election officials on Wednesday released newly calculated ranked choice voting results in the Democratic mayoral primary, after a first attempt went disastrously wrong.
The new results show Eric Adams still leading Kathryn Garcia, but fewer than 15,000 votes separate the two. Meanwhile, Maya Wiley was trailing behind Garcia by just 347 votes.
According to data from the city’s Board of Elections, Adams is still leading with 51.1% of the vote, but over 120,000 absentee ballots have still yet to be counted.
The results came from a second tally of an estimated 800,000 in-person ballots cast by Democratic primary voters, including second, third, fourth and fifth place choices.
The first tally was discarded by BOE officials on Tuesday, after they revealed there was a “discrepancy” in the results, just hours after publishing the numbers.
The news prompted sharp criticism from several candidates and elected officials across the city, but in a statement on Wednesday, BOE officials reassured New Yorkers that the vote is accurate.
Election officials on Tuesday said that ballot images used for testing were not cleared from the Election Management System, and were included in the original results.
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"When the cast vote records were extracted for the first pull of RCV results, it included both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional records," the Board of Elections said.
The test ballot images had been removed from the system prior to Wednesday's recount.
Earlier in the day, Mayor Bill de Blasio reacted to the BOE error and called on the State Legislature to take action on two bills to transform the Board of Elections.
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“Yet again, the fundamental structural flaws of the Board of Elections are on display. There must be an immediate, complete recanvass of the BOE’s vote count and a clear explanation of what went wrong. The record number of voters who turned out this election deserve nothing less," de Blasio said. "Going forward, there must be a complete structural rebuild of the board. I once offered the BOE over $20 million to reform themselves. They refused, leaving legislative action as the next available recourse. After waiting hours in line myself to vote last fall, I presented a plan to remake the Board of Elections."
Brooklyn Borough President and mayoral candidate Eric Adams had also filed a lawsuit in Kings County Supreme Court on Wednesday seeking to ensure a fair and transparent election process.
"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," Adams 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."
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Adams and his campaign were among the first on Tuesday to react to the election blunder, but remained confident that he would come out on top.
“The vote total just released by the Board of Elections is 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 before we comment on the Ranked Choice Voting projection,” Adams said in a statement. “We remain confident that Eric Adams will be the next mayor of New York because he put together a historic five-borough working class coalition of New Yorkers to make our city a safer, fairer, more affordable place.”
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Garcia also commented on the potential of election fraud in an interview with NY1, saying she and her team are prepared to sue, if it should come to that.
“We will make sure that as long as the votes are really being counted fairly. I'm hoping that we don't end up in a place where we have to do any legal action, but we will protect the campaign to make sure that every vote is counted and counted fairly,” she said.
In a statement on Wednesday, she remained confident that a second count of absentee ballots could give her the votes needed to best Adams.
“While we remain confident in our path to victory, we are taking nothing for granted and encourage everyone to patiently wait for over 124,000 absentee ballots to be counted and included in the ranked choice voting tabulation. Every vote is important and deserves to be counted. New Yorkers overwhelmingly voted to enact ranked choice voting and participated in it by ranking multiple candidates in our City’s first ranked-choice election. Every candidate should respect the democratic process and be committed to supporting whomever the voters have selected to be the Democratic nominee for Mayor. We look forward to the final tabulation in this historic election.”
Early projections from Primary Day had showed Adams leading the pack of Democrats vying to be mayor of New York City, followed by former Mayor de Blasio counsel Wiley and then Garcia.
While the first two ranked choice voting counts knocked Wiley out of the race, in two statements released Tuesday and Wednesday, she said she is not conceding.
“Following yesterday's embarrassing debacle, the Board of Elections must count every vote in an open way so that New Yorkers can have confidence that their votes are being counted accurately. As John Lewis said, democracy is an act, and we owe it to every single New York City resident who acted and to all residents to protect our democracy,” Wiley said in a statement. “We have made tremendous strides in making it easier to vote. Now residents deserve to have full faith in how our elections are administered. New Yorkers expect and deserve a transparent process and that every single vote is accurately counted - our democracy will be the stronger for it.”
Guardian Angels founder and longtime radio talk show host Curtis Sliwa, who was endorsed by former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, has already been named the winner of the Republican mayoral primary. He defeated businessman Fernando Mateo.
A second ranked choice voting count including most absentee ballots is expected to be released on Tuesday, July 6.