Major election errors have been uncovered in a solidly blue state. A recent announcement from the Board of Elections reveals that a “discrepancy” occurred in the tabulation of votes.
In the recent Democrat mayoral primary race, the New York City Board of Elections made a serious error that could have a significant impact on the results.
The New York Times reports: “The results released earlier in the day had suggested that the race between Eric Adams and his two closest rivals had tightened significantly. By late Tuesday evening, the tabulations had been taken down, replaced by a new advisory that the ranked-choice results would be available ‘starting on June 30.’”
Soon after the Board of Elections posted the initial results, a statement was posted to its official Twitter account noting that there was a “discrepancy” had happened that it was in the process of fixing.
“We are aware there is a discrepancy in the unofficial RCV round by round elimination report,” the elections board wrote. “We are working with our RCV technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred. We ask the public, elected officials and candidates to have patience.”
We are aware there is a discrepancy in the unofficial RCV round by round elimination report. We are working with our RCV technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred. We ask the public, elected officials and candidates to have patience.
— NYC Board of Elections (@BOENYC) June 29, 2021
After their announcement on Twitter, the NYC Board of Elections later released a longer statement, which read:
“The Board of Elections conducts rigorous and mandatory pre-qualification testing for every election. 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. 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. 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 Board apologizes for the error and has taken immediate measures to ensure the most accurate up to date results are reported.”
Two local journalists in New York City shared the news on Twitter, reporting that the “discrepancy” cited by the Board of Elections involved the board not removing a significant number of test votes from a computer.
“Elections 2.0: Sources tell me the Board of Elections is going back to the drawing board and running corrected ranked-choice numbers tomorrow. About 130,000 ‘votes’ were part of a test-run that were never cleared from a computer,” Spectrum News Political Director Bob Hardt wrote.
Elections 2.0: Sources tell me the Board of Elections is going back to the drawing board and running corrected ranked-choice numbers tomorrow. About 130,000 “votes” were part of a test-run that were never cleared from a computer.
— Bob Hardt (@bobhardt) June 30, 2021
“The [NYC Board of Elections] forgot to take out tens of thousands of practice ballots out of the system before running the RCV simulation today, which resulted in the ‘discrepancies,’” reporter Juan Manuel Benitez tweeted.
The @BOENYC forgot to take out tens of thousands of practice ballots out of the system before running the RCV simulation today, which resulted in the “discrepancies.”
— Juan Manuel Benítez (@JuanMaBenitez) June 30, 2021
