Former President Donald Trump on Wednesday said “nobody will ever know who really won” the Democratic primary for New York City mayor after tabulation mistakes by election officials sent the race into chaos.
Mr. Trump used the upheaval to renew unproven grievances about his 2020 loss and note that front-runner Eric Adams may not win the nomination despite a clear lead before the city deployed its new ranked-choice system.
“The Presidential Race was a Scam and a Hoax with numbers and results being found that are massive, shocking, and determinative. Watch the mess you are about to see in New York City, it will go on forever. They should close the books and do it all over again, the old-fashioned way, when we had results that were accurate and meaningful,” Mr. Trump, who is banned from Twitter, said in a written statement from his Save America political action committee.
Mr. Adams, the Brooklyn borough president and a retired police captain, enjoyed a double-digit lead after election night, but it shrank to less than 2 percentage points — around 16,000 votes — over former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia after the elections board eliminated lowest-performing Democratic candidates and reallocated votes under the new system
Progressive candidate Maya Wiley stood in third, but the city Board of Elections admitted there was a “discrepancy” in how they counted the votes and retracted the count.
The board said they included about 135,000 additional “test” ballots in the count of real ballots, so they needed to do it over. They hope to release results on Wednesday, but the problem is eroding trust in the process and people who manage it.
“Sadly, it is impossible to be surprised. Last summer BOE mishandled tens of thousands of mail-in ballots during the June 2020 primary. It has also been prone to complaints of patronage,” said Ms. Wiley, who dropped from second to third after the initial tabulation of ranked-choice voting. “Today, we have once again seen the mismanagement that has resulted in a lack of confidence in results, not because there is a flaw in our election laws, but because those who implement it have failed too many times.”
Ms. Garcia called for an accurate count and for all candidates to accept the results.
“The BOE’s release of incorrect ranked-choice votes is deeply troubling and requires a much more transparent and complete explanation,” Ms. Garcia said. “Every ranked-choice and absentee vote must be counted accurately so that all New Yorkers have faith in our democracy and our government.”
Mr. Adams, meanwhile, thanked the elections board for acknowledging its error after he saw his lead shrink dramatically in the faulty count. He said he looks forward to the release of “an accurate, updated simulation, and the timely conclusion of this critical process.”
Source:Washington Times
