The New York electoral office has admitted to having counted 135,000 excess ballots and is lagging behind in publishing the latest results of the Democratic primary for the municipal election. –
A new electoral system, test ballots counted in error, a candidate who came in second then in reality third … The Democratic primary for mayor of New York, whose winner will probably be the next city councilor, has sunk into chaos . Authorities admitted on Tuesday that they had mistakenly counted more than 100,000 test ballots, which had been used to verify the proper functioning of the new electoral system.
For the first time, New York is experimenting with so-called preferential voting, which allows up to five names to appear on a single ballot, ranked in order of preference. On Tuesday, the city’s electoral office released preliminary results, according to which former policeman Eric Adams, who was so far 9 points ahead of the second, was now neck and neck with Kathryn Garcia (51 % against 49% before the counting of the votes by correspondence).
Preliminary results are overdue
A few hours later, the results were withdrawn and the election office evoked a “difference” in the count. In question: these famous test reports, counted by mistake. In total, some 135,000 additional votes were counted, in addition to the 800,000 actual ballots.
Officials have apologized for this “mistake” and say they have removed the test reports from their new count, without publishing the updated preliminary results. This failure sparked an uproar in New York, where the election office already had an appalling reputation, being very regularly accused of incompetence and laxity. “This mistake […] is not just a failure to count the votes correctly, it is the result of generations of failures that have never been dealt with ”, tweeted Maya Wiley, the progressive candidate who came in second on the strength of the first preliminary results released on election night, June 22. According to the latest results, it would be third and therefore eliminated.
With this counting system, the lowest ranked candidate out of the total ballots is eliminated. Voters who placed this eliminated candidate first have their second choice taken into account. The mechanics then repeat themselves until a candidate reaches 50% of the vote.
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