The primary election to elect the Democratic candidate for mayor of New York fell into chaos after the city’s Board of Elections acknowledged a “discrepancy” in considering at least 135,000 test votes from its voting software.
On Tuesday, the Board released the first election results in which incumbent Brooklyn Borough President and polling leader Eric Adams reduced his lead over Kathryn Garcia, a former city health commissioner.
In a series of evening tweets that added to the confusion, he noted that the preliminary results that he had released earlier were in error.
At 10:30 p.m., the Board detailed that the aforementioned 135,000 votes had been added, which corresponded to test images to verify the functionality of the software used in the elections, and withdrew the results and the count from its website.
The Democratic primary election in New York City is decisive, since its inhabitants vote overwhelmingly for that party and therefore the winning candidate is considered to have a ‘direct pass’ to the mayor’s office.
Adams, who was also a local police commissioner, had set a distance in pre-election polls, although the new voting format did not bode well for a comfortable victory.
Now, the New York Electoral Board has indicated that the correct results of the election will be available starting this Wednesday, according to information from The New York Times.
What is and how does the new preferential voting system work in New York?
In addition to the candidates, the new voting scheme used in this primary election has stolen the spotlight. Unlike the traditional election scheme, in which only one candidate can be chosen from a shortlist, in the preferential system citizens list their options, in a sort of ranking.
In New York City, for example, there were 13 candidates available, but voters could choose five of them, ranking them from highest to lowest, according to their preference.
If no candidate obtains an absolute majority as the first option, the one with the fewest votes is eliminated and the votes he registered are divided among those who his voters preferred in second place.
The process is repeated until there is a candidate with an absolute majority.
It sounds complicated, but proponents of this scheme claim that it reduces the political divide and guarantees a stronger mandate to the winner, while allowing voters to better express their preferences at the polls.
Critics of the scheme, on the other hand, claim that it is too complex a system, slow to count and open to errors like the one that has occurred in the largest city in the United States.
Adams himself questioned the scheme, considering that the Hispanic and African-American minorities in the city lacked enough information to vote correctly.
Who are the top Democratic contenders for mayor of New York?
Eric Adams – Brooklyn Borough President and former New York Police Commissioner.
Shaun Donovan: Former federal secretary of housing and urban planning and former commissioner of the same category for the city.
Kathryn Garcia: Former New York Health Commissioner and Career Public Official in the city.
Maya Wiley: teacher and human rights lawyer.
Andrew Yang: technology entrepreneur and former presidential candidate in the United States.
