NY City election undermines confidence in elections

NEW YORK: The New York City Board of Elections' mishandling of the vote count in the high-profile mayoral race has thrown that contest into confusion, but the city's debacle has significant national import as well.

Confidence in elections nationwide has been on a precipitous decline over the last few years, as the integrity of U.S. election systems has come under assault from a campaign of lies and conspiracies by former President Donald Trump. Trump used his false claims to justify an attempt to try to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election. New York City provided evidence of botched vote counting when election officials released results on Tuesday and then retracted them after it was pointed out that their numbers were off. The board then announced it had accidentally counted 135,000 test ballots.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams held a comfortable lead in the Democratic primary for mayor after the first round of voting. The initial wave of ranked-choice tabulations on Tuesday saw the third-place candidate, former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, leap over civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley and narrow Adams's lead to a slim margin. But now the results are in disarray, as the candidates await another update from the Board of Elections.

Trump seized on the issue Wednesday morning, making the false claim that what happened in New York was "just like in the 2020 presidential election," although nothing remotely similar to 135,000 miscounted ballots took place anywhere in the country in last year's contest. He issued a second statement later in the morning, changing his claim to say that New York's mishandling of ballots was actually "far better and more accurate" than the 2020 election.

Some Democrats, in their zeal to fight back against examples of voter suppression, have also made claims in recent years that entire elections have been stolen. Rick Hasen, a top expert on elections, warned in his book

"Election Meltdown" that four "principal dangers" to democracy can jeopardize elections. Voter suppression is one. Dirty tricks are another. Incendiary rhetoric about "stolen" or "rigged" elections is the third. Finally, he considers "pockets" of incompetence in old and creaky election systems a fourth risk.