Headline RoundupJune 30th, 2021

NYC Mayoral Election Board Wrongly Counted 135,000 Test Ballots

Summary from the AllSides News Team

New York City's Board of Elections (BOE) said Tuesday evening that there was a "discrepancy" in its calculation of ranked-choice votes, and that 135,000 test ballot images had been included in the count. The board said it removed the test votes and will re-upload the correct election results Wednesday evening. After election day last week, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams had nearly 32% of the vote, while Maya Wiley, former counsel to current Mayor Bill de Blasio, had 22%. Tuesday's update, which has since been removed, showed Adams was at 51.1%, while former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia held 48.9%. The Tuesday update also excluded around 125,000 absentee ballots, which will be counted next week. Adams said in a statement, "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." Wiley called the mistake "the result of generations of failures that have gone unaddressed.”

The story received wide coverage from across the spectrum. Some outlets pointed to the mistake as an example of wider problems with the U.S. election system and highlighted some Americans' lack of faith in it. 

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