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On Tuesday the New York City mayoral primary erupted into chaos. The New York City Board of Elections posted unofficial results from its second round of calculations. They were using the new ranked-choice voting system.

The results suggested Kathryn Garcia, former sanitation commissioner who was running third on election night, had cut into the big lead former police officer Eric Adams had accumulated.

Within hours the Board withdrew those results. And they had to acknowledge a “discrepancy” between the total number of votes cast and the total number of votes reported on the new returns. The Board later claimed 135,000 sample ballots had accidentally been included in the vote count. 

The voters were understandably confused and most were blaming the election board for the problems. But they were also questioning the role of ranked-choice voting.

Ranked-choice voting

No one understood why the bi-partisan Board was so unprepared to handle vote-counting for a system it touted since 2019.

This is the first time ranked-choice voting has been used in New York City. It is supposed to allow voters to select multiple primary candidates. And then list them in order of preference.

If no candidate attracts 50% of first-choice rankings, tabulations move into successive rounds. Then counting of the second, third, fourth, and potentially even fifth choices of voters begins until a candidate gets over the 50% threshold.

No candidate received  50% on the Democrat side in last week's primary. And ranked-choice voting failed its first test.

There is no doubt that the confusion is providing fresh ammunition to critics of the Democrat's attempts to overhaul elections. Some observers even noted that the election fiasco may indirectly give credence to former President Donald Trump's election claims.