Why New York City’s mayoral race has taken a chaotic turn

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• Judy Woodruff:

  It has been more than a week since the polls closed in New York City.

  The Board of Elections just released updated tallies, but there is still no call on the Democratic primary results for mayor.

  One cause for the wait, a new system of voting called ranked choice, which lets voters list up to five candidates on their ballot. But the counting took a confusing turn yesterday.

  Yamiche Alcindor reports.

• Yamiche Alcindor:

  For the New York City Board of Elections, it's been a chaotic 24 hours.

  Yesterday, on their results Web page, the city posted some unofficial results, including 135,000 new ballots. Those results showed that the lead of the current front-runner, Eric Adams, had significantly narrowed against his two closest competitors, Maya Wiley and Kathryn Garcia.

  But, hours later, the city removed those additional ballots. Officials said a software error included sample test votes in the official tally.

  Here to help us understand what went wrong and what it means for ranked choice voting, I'm joined by Christina Greer. She's a professor of political science at Fordham University.

  Christina, thank you so much for being here.

  What in the world is going on? Why all of this confusion?

• Christina Greer:

  So, New York City voters decided that we were going to use rank choice voting for our municipal elections.

  And this is a period where, instead of having the winner-take-all and the winner of the election getting 40 percent or more and being declared the victor, this is a system that essentially counts all ballots.

  Eric Adams, as you mentioned, is in the lead, but we still have absentee and affidavit ballots that need to be counted. And until all those ballots are counted, we do not know who the mayor of New York City will be. It will most likely be another week or two, because those absentee ballots have to be postmarked by June 22, but they still can come in up until a week later.

  And so the Board of Elections is just now starting to count over 100,000 absentee ballots that aren't even in the tally that we had on election night.

• Yamiche Alcindor:

  And why did New York City, the largest city in the United States, why did it implement ranked choice voting? And what are the benefits supposed to be?

• Christina Greer:

  Well, the benefits are supposed to be, when we have looked at places like Minneapolis or San Francisco, to include candidates of color, female candidates, female candidates of color, to give them a better opportunity, because, ostensibly, if you can vote up until — to five people, you possibly don't have to think strategically in the way that a lot of people do.

  And so we know that, in past elections, people might say, well, I really like this candidate, but, because she's a woman, she has no chance of winning, so I will vote for my second or third choice. This gives voters the opportunity to say, well, I really do like this particular candidate, and I'm going to write them first.

  And you don't have to be as sort of strategic as people have been in the past. Now, it's a little complicated, because some people are still strategic with their ballots. Others who are critics of the system complain that there wasn't enough education to really explain whether or not you should just vote for your ideal candidate, whether or not you should vote for up to all five, or just choose three.

  And part of the confusion is that the Board of Elections didn't really want to put out too, too much literature explaining this process during 2020 because they didn't want to confuse voters, because we did not use ranked choice voting in November of 2020 for the presidential election.

• Yamiche Alcindor:

  And Eric Adams, the front-runner right now, he has filed a lawsuit. What's that going to mean for what happens next and how — and whether or not, I should say, New Yorkers really ultimately trust these results?

• Christina Greer:

  Right.

  So filing lawsuits isn't terribly uncommon. Andrew Yang filed a lawsuit well before the election was over. And he came in fourth as of now, Eric Adams, though, is not part of the political class, even though he's been a public servant for quite some time. He has an insider/outsider-type status.

  And so his concern is that those in power don't necessarily want him to be the 110th mayor of New York, I think the concern for people like me is that, the longer it takes to count the ballots, obviously, confidence in the system erodes from some voters who think that there could be discrepancies or some sort of inconsistencies or correction.

  But we're trying to explain to New York City voters, with this complex system, we are a city of almost nine million people. Even though our turnout is pretty low, it's about 25 percent of the voting-eligible population, it's more important to get it right than to get it fast.

• Yamiche Alcindor:

  How do you see this issue in New York City connecting with the larger conversation we're having nationally when it comes to the false claims of voter fraud, these GOP-backed laws restricting voting?

• Christina Greer:

  Well, I mean, sometimes, there's incompetence, and, sometimes, there's fraud.

  I think, right now, we're looking at incompetence. And a real restructuring of the Board of Elections in New York City needs to happen. And those are conversations that need to extend well beyond Election Day.

  Sadly, though, the two have been conflated. And we will have to have some real conversations, especially depending on who is victorious whenever we get these ballots. It depends on whether or not their opponents actually raise claims of fraud or just inconsistencies.

• Yamiche Alcindor:

  Incompetence, not fraud, we will keep that going and think — and keep that in mind.

• Christina Greer:

  Thanks, Yamiche.