Eric Adams filed a lawsuit asking a judge to review the ballots in the New York City Democratic mayoral primary one day after the city’s board of elections acknowledged releasing erroneous preliminary results from its new ranked-choice voting system.
“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,” the Adams campaign said in a statement. “We invite the other campaigns to join us and petition the court as we all seek a clear and trusted conclusion to this election.”
DISCREPANCY WITH TEST BALLOTS DISRUPTS NYC MAYORAL PRIMARY
The lawsuit, filed in Kings County Supreme Court, comes in response to inaccurate results released Tuesday showing mayoral candidate Kathryn Garcia coming within 2.2 percentage points of Adams, whose tallies showed a significant lead since election night.
Shortly after numbers were released, reporters and campaign staffers raised their eyebrows at the updated results. According to the update, roughly 135,000 more votes were counted than on election night on June 22.
Three hours later, the Board of Elections took down the numbers and released a statement explaining the discrepancy.
“The Board apologizes for the error and has taken immediate measures to ensure the most accurate up to date results are reported,” the board said in a statement.
The error sparked criticism from both sides of the aisle, particularly from those who oppose ranked-choice voting.
“Today’s mistake by the Board of Elections was unfortunate,” Adams said in a statement Tuesday night. “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.”
The mistake also drew comments from former President Donald Trump, who released a statement comparing the slip-up to the 2020 election, repeating claims the presidential contest was stolen from him despite assurances by federal and state election officials that there was no evidence of widespread fraud.
“The fact is, based on what has happened, nobody will ever know who really won,” Trump said. “The Presidential Race was a Scam and a Hoax with numbers and results being found that are massive, shocking and determinative.”
Adams fired back on Twitter, arguing the New York City mistake had “NO similar issues” with the November election.
“As always, Trump gets it wrong,” the mayoral candidate said Wednesday. “Neither of these elections were a hoax or a scam. We need to count every vote. That takes time, and that’s ok.”
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The city’s election board assured voters the reporting error was not caused by the new voting system but by human error.
“Let us be clear: RCV was not the problem, rather a human error that could have been avoided,” board commissioners said in a statement. “We have implemented another layer of review and quality control before publishing information going forward.”
