It's not a good time to wiggle a vote count, but it is hard to think of a worse time for American democracy to whine so badly. Yet, here we are in New York City Elections Board's Tuesday night announcement that it had included 135,000 sample votes in the live results for the yet unresolved Democratic primaries for mayor. These sample ballots were used for testing the software that would be used to count the votes in the city's first ever ranked choice election. Voters can rank up to five candidates. This method, which is also used in other parts of the country and the world, is thought to be more representative than simple plurality. It allows similar candidates to split voter blocks, opening the door for, for example, a third candidate who doesn't have much support to win office.AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementWe might not know if ranked choice is good or bad for us. Tabulating ranked-choice results takes longer because all votes actually have an effect on the outcome. On Tuesday afternoon, the Board of Elections published preliminary unofficial results on its website. They showed Eric Adams, Brooklyn Borough President, leading but less than expected, ahead of Maya Wiley, Kathryn Garcia, and raising concerns that Adams could be surpassed once the votes of the remaining candidates are redistributed. However, the elections board quickly removed the unofficial results and issued a statement stating that there was a discrepancy due to the presence of sample votes in the live vote count.Subscribe to the Slatest Newsletter Get a daily email update with the latest stories. Signing you up was not possible due to an error Please try again. To use this form, please enable jаvascript. Email address: I would like to receive updates on Slate special offers. You agree to our Privacy Policy & Terms by signing up. Thank you for signing up! You can cancel your subscription at any time.Still 124,000 Democratic absentee votes are to be counted in the ranked-choice process. A candidate who won the majority of votes in the initial election would have been declared the winner, just as any other election. The new ranked choice method was implemented. It sequentially distributed the votes of last-place candidates to the remaining candidates based upon the voters' second choice. This continues until the last candidate receives 50% of the vote. Although rare, it is not uncommon for a candidate to become a popular second choice of voters and surpass the leader.Vote tabulation is more complex, which is why ranked choice voting is so popular. People don't understand it and won't trust it. The botched New York results are a great example of this line of thinking. According to the city, it will have the final vote count from the June 22 primary by mid July.
