Former President Donald Trump took a victory lap after a discrepancy over test ballots threw New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor into disarray.
“Watch the mess you are about to see in New York City, it will go on forever,” Trump said in a statement issued through his political action committee on Wednesday. “They should close the books and do it all over again, the old-fashioned way, when we had results that were accurate and meaningful.”
But the New York City Board of Elections’s struggles with the first contest to feature ranked-choice voting also has broader implications for Republicans opposed to Democratic legislation they claim would amount to a federal takeover of elections. Many Republicans are instead supportive of a series of state-level bills described as curtailing voter fraud.
BIDEN MAY HAVE OUTSMARTED HIMSELF ON INFRASTRUCTURE
To them, the failure to clear 135,000 test ballot images, which led to the since-retracted reporting of results that reduced the lead of Democratic front-runner Eric Adams, illustrates the problems they say need to be addressed in liberal jurisdictions across the country.
“It calls into question the competence of all Democrats who administer elections,” said Republican strategist John Feehery. “And these guys want to federalize this kind of incompetence? Give me a break.”
The Democrats’ For the People Act passed the House earlier this year but failed to overcome a Senate filibuster. Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, sided with his party on advancing the bill but said he would oppose its final passage if it made it to the Senate floor.
Democrats argued that the bill was necessary to curb partisan gerrymandering, correct campaign finance laws that give too much influence to corporations and the wealthy, and prevent state-level assaults on voting rights. Republicans countered that it was a liberal wish list mainly intended to rewrite election rules in favor of the Democrats a year ahead of a midterm campaign in which President Joe Biden’s party will be defending narrow majorities in both houses of Congress.
It is part of a broader debate over the trade-offs between ballot security and access that has become more intense because each side perceives the other to be trying to rig the rules to their partisan advantage. Democrats also contend that many GOP “election integrity” measures have a disparate impact on racial minorities, comparing them to attempts to prevent black voters from casting their ballots during Jim Crow.
“Biden’s DOJ has it backwards — New York shows we should be enacting measures that improve election integrity, not tearing them down,” said Republican National Committee rapid response director Tommy Pigott, referring to a Justice Department lawsuit against a controversial voting law passed by Georgia’s GOP-controlled Legislature. “Instead, Democrats in D.C. want to nationalize New York’s election failures with their H.R. 1 power grab. New York’s disaster … A preview of what’s coming to elections near you if Democrats get their way, whether you like it or not.”
Still, many Republicans could not help but notice the similarities between Adams’s statements decrying New York City’s election troubles with claims made by Trump and his allies about last year’s presidential race.
“Will @ericadamsfornyc be cancelled for questioning NYC election?” tweeted former New York City Police Commissioner Bernie Kerik. “President Trump and @RudyGiuliani questioned 11,000 votes in Georgia and have been attacked, cancelled and targeted by the left.”
“Let me get this straight?” tweeted Donald Trump Jr. “You can be off by 135,000 votes in a New York City mayoral primary alone but if someone loses the White House by less than 45,000 across multiple states in a presidential election you can’t have any questions.”
The former president himself got into the act. “Just like in the 2020 Presidential Election, it was announced overnight in New York City that vast irregularities and mistakes were made and that Eric Adams, despite an almost insurmountable lead, may not win the race,” the elder Trump said in a statement. “The fact is, based on what has happened, nobody will ever know who really won.”
Trump added, “The New York City Election, even though an embarrassment and total mess, is far better and more accurate than my 2020 Presidential Election — so what are people complaining about!”
“The vote total just released by the Board of Elections is 100,000-plus more than the total announced on election night, raising serious questions,” Adams said in a statement Tuesday following the release of the report. “We have asked the Board of Elections to explain such a massive increase and other irregularities before we comment on the Ranked Choice Voting projection.”
The ex-president has encouraged election audits in states he narrowly lost and has continued to call the results a “hoax.”
Even some Republicans who reject Trump’s assertions that voter fraud swung the election in Biden’s favor, rejected by the Justice Department when William Barr was still attorney general and most state authorities, raise questions about the security of mass mail-in voting and practices like ballot harvesting.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE IN THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
A recent Monmouth University poll found that the public supports voter ID by a margin of 80% to 18%, including 62% of Democrats.
The same pollster found that 32% believe Biden’s win was attributable to voter fraud. This includes a majority of Republicans.
