Revised vote count again shows tight NYC mayoral race following Tuesday's tally tumult

Fox News Flash top headlines for June 30

Fox News Flash top headlines are here. Check out what’s clicking on Foxnews.com.

The New York City Board of Elections released an update Wednesday evening, showing mayoral candidates Eric Adams neck-and-neck with Kathryn Garcia following the fallout over a significant tabulation error.

The city’s rank-choice votes are largely in, with Adams edging ahead of Garcia by 51 percent to 49 percent of the votes, though there are another 124,000 absentee ballots still to be counted.

New York launched rank-choice voting this year – which relies on voters ranking their candidate preferences in order rather than selecting one candidate on the ballot. 

The city’s mayoral race was the first major test in the new voting system, but the board’s Tuesday announcement that 135,000 pre-election test votes had been accidentally counted left some questioning the new system.

“Yesterday’s ranked–choice voting reporting error was unacceptable and we apologize to the voters and to the campaigns for the confusion,” Commissioners of the Board of Elections said in a statement Wednesday.

“Let us be clear: rank-choice voting was not the problem, rather a human error that could have been avoided,” the group said, adding that the error had been corrected and an extra layer of review implemented.

Mayoral candidate Maya Wiley, who was endorsed by New York Democrat Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, was “eliminated” from the race Wednesday, according to the board’s latest tally.

But Wiley maintains the race is far from over.

“With more than 120,000 absentee ballots left to count – in addition to provisional ballots and potential recanvassing of results – this election is still wide open,” she said in a statement.

Adams is currently leading the race over Garcia by more than 14,750 votes, an advantage not all that different from Tuesday’s tally that included the “test ballots.”

“Our campaign was the first choice of voters on Election Day and is leading this race by a significant margin,” Adams said in a statement, adding he and his team believe the majority of the absentee ballots will “favor” him.  

Garcia said she remains “confident” but is “taking nothing for granted.” She encouraged all candidates to patiently await the tally of the 124,000 absentee ballots. 

Source: Read Full Article