The Democrat primary for the New York City mayoral race is a mess. Candidate Eric Adams raised concerns last week after more than 100,000 ballots mysteriously appeared and was mocked by some people for it, but then he turned out to be right.
Now all of the candidates still in the running want to be able to review ballots. Weren’t we told that questioning the outcome of elections is a threat to our democracy? I’m pretty sure we were.
The Associated Press reports:
NYC mayoral contenders file lawsuits seeking ballot reviewAll three candidates who are still in the running in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary have filed legal actions seeking the right to review the ongoing ranked choice vote tally.Civil rights attorney Maya Wiley filed a lawsuit Thursday in state court in Brooklyn seeking to preserve her right to challenge the election results and asking for all of the ballots that were “cast or attempted to be cast” to be saved.“This is a wide open race and as is standard procedure, my campaign filed a petition to preserve the right to challenge the results should we believe it is necessary,” Wiley said in a statement Friday.Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia filed similar legal actions on Wednesday. That was the day after New York City’s Board of Elections posted vote totals for the June 22 primary that erroneously included test data and then retracted them.Revised vote counts posted Wednesday showed Adams, a former police captain and state senator, leading Garcia by 14,755 votes. Wiley was practically tied with Garcia, falling just 347 votes behind in the ranked choice analysis.
Part of the problem here is that they’re using ranked choice voting. Ranked choice voting is like Common Core math. At some point, a progressive looked at something that’s very simple and decided they could improve it by making it more complicated.
The candidates are already signalling that they may sue over the results. Will they be accused of being a threat to our democracy?
Tim Balk writes at the New York Daily News:
Maya Wiley files legal paperwork to challenge NYC mayoral election, if desiredFollowing the New York City Board of Elections ballot bungle, mayoral candidate Maya Wiley filed a lawsuit on Thursday night aimed at preserving her right to a recount in the city’s Democratic primary.Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor de Blasio, submitted the court papers ahead of a Friday deadline to file such a suit after the June 22 primary, which remains unsettled due to a long wait for the tallying of absentee ballots.The eight-page complaint, which was filed in Kings County Supreme Court, said the intention of the litigation is to preserve the right “to correct errors that have occurred, are occurring, or may occur” in the recording of election results.Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner, filed similar suits on Wednesday.
What a train wreck.
No matter who wins here, there are going to be lots of people who don’t trust the outcome. I can’t wait to see the media decide that questioning election results is acceptable again.
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