NYC Links Election Error to Failure to Clear Queens Test Ballots

(Bloomberg) -- New York City's Board of Elections said a counting snafu last week was due to human error after workers failed to clear test ballots in Queens. The mishap had zero impact on the actual results, which were re-released the next day, officials said during a regular meeting of commissioners on Tuesday.

Last week's release from the Board of Elections showed front-runner Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams holding a lead, with former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia overtaking civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley for second place.

The elections board is set to release the long-awaited results of as many as 125,794 absentee ballots in the city's Democratic primary race on Tuesday, which is expected to provide more clarity on who the next mayor will be.

A board spokeswoman said the results will be released this afternoon, but there still may not be a declared winner if the race remains too close to call. There are more than 3,600 ballots that will still need to be “cured,” a process that allows voters to fix any problems found on their ballot such as a missing signature.

The tally was thrown into disarray last week after the ballot-counting mishap, which elections officials again apologized for during the Tuesday meeting. The board, which has been criticized for partisan patronage and election foibles, said it has instituted manual quality control measures to ensure the error doesn't happen again but declined to explain what the measures are.

“The reporting error was unacceptable,” said Dawn Sandow, Deputy Executive Director for the Board of Elections, at the meeting. “What we can say with certainty is this issue caused no votes to be lost, no voter disenfranchised and no incorrect results to be certified.”