Mayoral candidates call for reforms, recounts after NYC Board of Elections admits 'errors'

Candidates and officials sharply criticized the New York City Board of Elections after the Board admitted late Tuesday night to counting over 130,000 test votes.

Candidates and officials sharply criticized the New York City Board of Elections -- with some calling for reforms -- after the BOE admitted late Tuesday night to counting over 130,000 test votes in an initial release of vote tallies for the city's ranked-choice Democratic mayoral primary. Tuesday's count of in-person votes showed Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams maintaining a close lead over the other front-runners, former consul to Mayor Bill de Blasio Maya Wiley and former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia. But the Board of Elections removed the results from its website late Tuesday, and tweeted a statement around 10:30 p.m. ET that admitted to including test votes in the released figures. "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 errors," the BOE said. It committed to removing the test votes and accurately recounting.