OPINION: This article may contain commentary which reflects the author's opinion.
New York City’s Democrat mayoral primary continues to get worse by the day.
An explosive new report from the New York Post alleges that New York City election officials held a secret meeting to discuss the botched vote count in the Democrat mayoral primary.
This “secret” meeting was allegedly illegal.
The Post reported:
Red-faced city election officials held an apparently illegal, secret meeting Wednesday to discuss the botched vote count that threw the Democratic mayoral primary into chaos, The Post has learned.
Board of Elections President Fred Umane said the board was briefed by staffers about the colossal screw-up that led to 135,000 fake ballots from a test run of the BOE’s computer system mistakenly being included in preliminary results released Tuesday afternoon.
Umane, a Manhattan Republican, said that the test ballots came from one borough but that “the error was made in the general office.”
“We’re still trying to do the investigation. The problem has been rectified,” he said.
It does not appear that anyone from the public attended the meeting or was told about it.
New York state law states that all meetings of public bodies “should be open to the general public.”
Meetings can go private but only after it is voted on in a public setting.
Donald Trump compared the city Board of Election’s error-plagued vote count with his own 2020 election defeat.
“Just like in the 2020 Presidential Election, it was announced overnight in New York City that vast irregularities and mistakes were made,” Trump wrote in an email message. “The fact is, based on what has happened, nobody will ever know who really won.”
Trump on the election mess in New York City: pic.twitter.com/rwe8MFRKhb
— Byron York (@ByronYork) June 30, 2021
Beyond that, everything is in chaos.
Things heated up dramatically late on Tuesday night when the New York City Board of Elections admitted that over 135,000 votes were erroneously tabulated in the race.
Officials initially retracted their vote results after discovering the results had been corrupted by test deck data that were never cleared from the voting system.
“The Board of Elections conducts rigorous and mandatory pre-qualification testing for every election,” the BOE said. “It has been determined that ballot images used for testing were not cleared from the Election Management System (EMS).”
“EMS produces Cast Vote Records (CVR) from ballot images,” the statement continued. “RCV software uses the CVR to produce unofficial results.”
“When the cast vote records were extracted for the first pull of RCV results, it included both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional records,” the statement added.
“Board staff has removed all test ballot images from the system and will upload election night results, cross-referencing against election night reporting software for verification. The cast vote record will be re-generated and the RCV rounds will be re-tabulated,” the BOE went on.
“The Board apologizes for the error and has taken immediate measures to ensure the most accurate up-to-date results are reported.”
— NYC Board of Elections (@BOENYC) June 30, 2021
Democratic mayoral candidate frontrunner Eric Adams has filed a lawsuit seeking to have a judge oversee the botched vote count in the convoluted race.
“We petitioned the court to preserve our right to a fair election process and to have a judge oversee and review ballots, if necessary,” the Adams campaign said in a statement.
“We all seek a clear and trusted conclusion to this election,” the Adams campaign said.
The suit was filed after the city Board of Elections released a botched simulation of how ranked-choice voting would play out after the initial count of early and election day in-person votes.
The board claims they “accidentally” added some 135,000 dummy ballots to the count, rendering the simulation useless and possibly misleading.
About 130,000 mail-in ballots remain uncounted altogether.
Late on Wednesday night, the city’s Board of Elections released updated vote totals showing Adams in the lead with 51.1 percent, followed by Kathryn Garcia with 48.9 percent.
