Results of Democrat ranked-choice primary in New York City REMOVED after ‘Trump-like’ frontrunner questions discrepancy

After a candidate leading the unofficial tally in the Democrat primary for the mayor of the Big Apple raised concerns about discrepancies – and got compared to Donald Trump for doing so – the results were taken offline.

According to tallies posted earlier on Tuesday – a week after the June 22 primary – Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams had a slim lead of 51.1% over former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia, who stood at 48.9%. This was based on 11 rounds of tallying ranked-choice ballots – and with 125,000 or so absentee ballots still untouched.

“The vote total just released by the Board of Elections is 100,000-plus more than the total announced on election night, raising serious questions,” Adams’ campaign said in a statement on Tuesday afternoon. “We have asked the Board of Elections to explain such a massive increase before we comment on the Ranked Choice Voting projection.” 

Adams “goes there,” said New York Times reporter Dana Rubinstein, implying inappropriate questioning of election results.

“I've been told you are not allowed to question irregularities,” quipped Donald Trump Jr., retweeting Rubinstein – referring to the way his father, the 45th US president, was treated when he objected to delayed results of the 2020 election.

He wasn’t the only one to make the comparison, either. MSNBC host Chris Hayes – who spent four years accusing Russia of interfering with the 2016 US presidential election – implied Adams was engaging in “the corrosive Big Lie conspiracy-theorizing and delegitimization of elections that Trump and the GOP have unleashed.” 

Adams “gave us every reason to worry he'd go Trump-style on the RCV results, and here we are,” said the liberal website Daily Kos. Mere minutes later, however, they had to add a “welp,” as the New York City Board of Elections issued a statement essentially saying that Adams was right.

“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,” the board tweeted at 6:20pm on Tuesday.

Even then,“serious, responsible liberal pundits” continued to mock Adams and seem not to have noticed the BOE statement vindicating his questioning, journalist Glenn Greenwald pointed out.

Greenwald added that “the inability to count votes quickly and in a way that inspires confidence is doing more to erode trust in US democracy and the voting process than almost any other single factor.”

At some point after issuing the statement in response to Adams, the Board of Elections removed all the ranked-choice voting (RCV) tallies from their site, replacing it with an announcement that “unofficial” results will be released starting June 30.

RCV, which the New York Democrats just introduced, has voters mark every candidate on the ballot in the order of preference. Ballots are then counted in multiple rounds, with secondary preferences being added to other candidates’ totals – a process that has taken a week and apparently still has to take mail-in ballots into consideration.

Republicans, meanwhile, expressed amusement with both the Democrats’ frustration with the primary and the way it reflected on their assertions about the 2020 election.

“That New York mayoral election is shady… but we’re allowed to talk about it because whatever happened – Democrat still wins,” said lawyer and filmmaker Mike Cernovich.

“And to think this happened just months after the most secure election in history,” commented Human Events editor Jack Posobiec. 

National Review and New York Post columnist Kyle Smith just shared a Tuesday morning headline from the Washington Post, claiming that RCV “went smoothly” in New York.

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