New York City’s bungled mayoral election count is drawing scrutiny from Democratic House members, who rely on the same vote-counting bodies to return them to Washington every two years.
The June 22 New York City mayoral contest was the first in which the nation’s largest city used a ranked-choice voting method to determine party nominees in the overwhelmingly Democratic city. Instead of casting a single vote for a single candidate, voters in a ranked-choice system could select a set number of candidates in order of preference. In New York’s mayoral primary, voters were allowed to choose up to five.
DISCREPANCY WITH TEST BALLOTS DISRUPTS NYC MAYORAL PRIMARY
But all has not gone smoothly. City Board of Elections officials conceded the agency accidentally mixed in test results in the final vote tally of the too-close-to-call primary election, resulting in 135,000 extra ballots, a critical error first noted by Democratic front-runner Eric Adams.
While New York Democrats were equally upset about what happened, each had different reasons as to why they think a breakdown occurred.
Rep. Gregory Meeks, who initially favored Ray McGuire for mayor but later supported Adams, blamed the implementation of the rank-choice voting system for the primary.
“I thought that it would be damaging to people of color and have had real concerns in that regard,” he told the Washington Examiner. “You saw more folks of color being elected to the City Council than ever before — more people running, more women running, and then the system changed.”
Meeks lamented that previously, if a citywide primary candidate for office did not get 40% of the vote, there would be a runoff and, to him, that seemed like “the right thing to do.”
He added, “That is no longer is the case. Under rank-choice voting, I think that the whole process needs to be reviewed once we get past this election.”
Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, a supporter of Maya Wiley’s mayoral candidacy, however, says rank-choice voting has nothing to do with the screw-up at the city Board of Elections.
“The incompetence of the New York City BoE far predates ranked-choice voting,” she told the Washington Examiner, noting that she and others have been “blowing the whistle on the BoE for a few years now.”
She added, “A lot of it has to do with the patronage structure that the BoE is built on. It’s a vestige of Tammany Hall, and we’re seeing what happens when it’s not based on actually hiring and not having this be appointment based.”
Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic Caucus chairman and fellow Wiley supporter, told the Washington Examiner that the board “needs to get its act together.” He went on to say, “It’s a disgrace, and the voters in New York City deserve better.”
Jeffries says it is too early to tell if rank-choice voting is to blame for the problems but called for a complete investigation into the issue.
Rep. Carolyn Maloney, chairwoman of the House Oversight Committee, recently experienced a close primary of her own when her race went into overtime with a long absentee ballot count.
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“They need to move into the 21st century and get more automated. I can’t believe that they came out with a number and said that it’s wrong,” Maloney said of the mayoral primary count snag. “Everybody’s totally confused and very disturbed about it. And it shows that you need to modernize.”
