NYC mayoral primary in chaos after 135,000 pre-election test ballots counted

The New York City Board of Elections on Tuesday faced swift backlash over an error that resulted in 135,000 pre-election test votes being counted because they were not properly purged from the system.

Karol Markowicz, a columnist for the New York Post, tweeted, "Can’t be overstated how damaging this kind of thing is to public trust in elections." The New York Times pointed out that the city used ranked-choice voting, which allows voters to list their top five candidates in order. Since no candidate was the first choice of more than 50% of voters, a computer on Tuesday tabulated ballots in a series of rounds that worked like instant run-offs. In each round, the candidate in last place was eliminated. Votes cast for that person were then redistributed to the surviving candidates, based on whoever voters put next on their ranking list. That process repeated until only two candidates were left.