Eric Adams' campaign filed a preemptive suit Wednesday in Brooklyn asking for a judge to oversee the results. Spencer Platt/Getty Images New York A relic from the past': New Yorks troubled election agency ignites furyNEW YORK Kathryn Garcia and Eric Adams are suing. Donald Trump promotes conspiracy theories. The final results of New York's mayoral primary might not be known for several weeks, or even months.The Tuesday botched counting of the city's ranked-choice elections results has sparked criticism and calls to reform New Yorks notorious Board of Elections. However, Maya Wiley, the candidate for Tuesday night, stated Tuesday night that it was impossible to be shocked.As with the Macys Thanksgiving Day Parade and July 4th on Coney Island, bungled ballots and the ensuing chaos have become a New York tradition. Elections in New York have been managed by a board that is controlled by political party machine and paid for by patronage.The Board of Elections had to retract its set of mayoral primary results published Tuesday. Staffers had inadvertently included 135,000 test votes in the numbers. This is the first time that a citywide election has been held under a new system for ranked-choice vote.It is broken. It is arcane, Mayor Bill de Blasio stated of Wednesday's board. They are a relic of the past, a partisan board without accountability.This cycle of election day stumbles, followed by recriminations and hearings, has been repeated many times before. New York's elected officials have not taken any action to reform the board, whose structure has been set by state law.De Blasios' comments in fact echo those made by him in October when the elections board withheld funding for cities to expand early voting. Sites saw long lines ahead the presidential election."This is the time for reform and change. It is clear that this is the time. People are mad. They want to get involved. I will reach out to him and make a suggestion for changing things.He mentioned a bill in the state Legislature that he supports, which could professionalize boards operations. However, he said that changing the structure would require a constitutional amend.Ten commissioners control the board, one Democrat and one Republican representing each of the five boroughs. These commissioners have authority over the board's operations and hiring. Jobs at all levels are traditionally divided up among the local parties.It is one of the few vestiges of a party system that dates back at Tammany Hall. County parties have lost much of their influence on who wins local elections but still retain control over the administration.Although the City Council is authorized to approve BOE commissioners it has not used this power to veto any problematic picks. Instead, it rubber stamps nominations from the county parties.De Blasio has two bills in the state legislature. One would give the boards executive directors authority over day to day operations and another state constitutional amendment would end the partisan structure.Senator Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cusins (D Yonkers), has vowed to hold hearings soon.In a statement Wednesday, she stated that New York City's situation is a national embarrassment. She called for swift and proper resolution. The Senate will hold hearings about the situation in the coming weeks and will try to pass reform legislation at the earliest possible opportunity.State Sen. Liz Krueger, a Democratic Senator from Manhattan, sponsored the bill. She stated that "the number of errors at every level of management must have led to the release of these incorrect numbers is mind-boggling" and called for immediate reform.Representatives for Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie, (D-Bronx), and Gov. Andrew Cuomo didn't respond to questions regarding their positions on the legislation.However, the feeling of dj vu was tangible.Jumaane William, Public Advocate, said that he hoped that the embarrassingly incompetent error would cause enough embarrassment to spur reform.There have been some very bad mistakes before. He said that this one is a national embarrassment.The BOE failed last year to mail absentee ballots on time. This forced many New Yorkers to vote in person, despite the Covid-19 pandemic, or to give up their right to vote. Another mistake was made in the general election: Some 100,000 ballots were sent out by the board with wrong return envelopes to Brooklyn voters, fueling conspiracy theories from then-President Donald Trump.Trump has been calling for audits of 2020 election results that are based on false claims about election fraud. He took Wednesday's opportunity to play golf with his local election administrators.The former president stated that nobody will ever know who won based on the events. It will continue forever, as you can see from the chaos in New York City. They should shut down the books and start over, the old-fashioned method, which yielded accurate and meaningful results.The board is full of nepotism and patronage: In 2013, the Department of Investigation found that at least 69 BOE employees had a relative working at the board. This included two commissioners. After finding that the agency had hired thousands of unneeded poll workers in an off-year election, DOI established a special unit to investigate the board.BOE wrongly expelled over 200,000 voters from the rolls ahead of the 2016 presidential primaries. This contest led to another round in investigations, one of which was conducted by the state attorney general.Reports of chaos at polls caused long lines, broken machines and closed polling stations. This was also true for the 2010 state primary, which saw new voting machines adopted. The 2012 presidential general election, and the 2018 general elections for governor were marred by jammed polls due to soggy ballots.De Blasio offered $20 million to the board in return for agreeing to several reforms. These included improving training of poll workers and hiring an outside consultant to examine its operations. BOE declined to accept the money.The bungling is not new. However, this latest error marred the city's first attempt at electing a mayor using a new ranked choice voting system. Critics of ranked choice voting took to the streets to attack the system. However, its defenders claimed that it was human error and not rankedchoice that was to blame.Ranked-choice allows voters the ability to choose up to five candidates in their order of preference. If no candidate gets a majority, they are eliminated and the votes of the second-place candidates are assigned to them. This continues until the candidate has reached 50 percent.Since Tuesday's results were retracted, they were a tabulation based on those elimination rounds. However, they weren't intended to be final as more than 124,000 absentee votes still need to be counted. These results showed Eric Adams leading in the Democratic primary narrowing significantly. The results of Wednesday's new polls were roughly the same.For months, our members had warned the public that the City was not prepared to conduct elections under the new Ranked Choice Voting system. The City Councils Black, Latino, and Asian Caucus released a statement confirming their concerns. The caucus supported legislation to allow ranked-choice voting, which was approved in 2019 by a public referendum, up for another vote that could repeal it.The Adams campaign filed a preemptive suit Wednesday in Brooklyn asking for the chance to have a judge supervise the results. The campaign stated that they petitioned the court today to protect our right to fair elections and request that a judge review and oversee ballots. As required by law we are notifying other campaigns through personal service of our lawsuit because they are interested parties. As we seek to reach a fair and trustful conclusion to this election, we invite all other campaigns to join us in petitioning the court.Garcia's campaign also filed a similar suit Wednesday.Susan Lerner, head for the Good Government Group Common Cause, supports ranked-choice vote. She said that the opponents of the system are misguided and misleading the public.She said that many of them are in positions of power to effect real change at the Board of Elections, and reform the structure. Instead, they distract by pounding at RCV instead of addressing the issues theyve been ignoring or benefiting from.De Blasio did find a silver lining. The primary was moved to June in the city instead of the fall. This gives the city more time to choose a Democratic nominee.He said, "If this were a September primaries, we'd all have to be screwed right here."Joe Anuta, Sally Goldenberg and others contributed to this report.
