Error leads to confusion in New York mayoral primary

The New York City Board of Elections late Tuesday pulled down its first round of results from the mayoral Democratic primary after accidentally including 135,000 test votes in the tally. The initial report showed Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams losing much of his lead against former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia with fewer than 16,000 votes between them. The board apologized for the error in a statement and said it was working on correcting the results.

What is significant about this primary election? This is New York City’s first foray into ranked choice voting, which allows voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. It eliminates the last candidate in each round and redistributes the votes to the remaining candidates based on the next candidate on voters' list. Tuesday’s bungled results, which is also incomplete as it didn’t include the party’s nearly 125,000 absentee ballots, confirmed worries the Board of Elections was unprepared for this new system.

Dig deeper: Listen to Anna Johansen’s report from 2019 about ranked choice voting in Maine.