Can trust in our election integrity be undermined any further? New York shows how it’s done.
After many months of shrieking that challenges to election integrity by anyone even vaguely on the right are Big Lies by definition, the left has a bit of egg on its face.
In New York’s recent mayoral primary the Democratic Party had some candidates who were more to the left as well as those who were not as far to the left and maybe even a bit on the right. One of the latter, Eric Adams, did quite well in what is a complex ranked-choice system that won’t declare a winner till a few weeks have passed.
Adams is a Democrat (he’s also black), but he’s a relative law-and-order guy, which puts him somewhat on the right. Suddenly, over 100,000 votes came out of nowhere and narrowed his strong lead considerably. That’s when Adams questioned the validity of what had happened, and the left exploded with anger and derision:
“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 said in a statement. “We have asked the Board of Elections to explain such a massive increase and other irregularities before we comment on the Ranked Choice Voting projection.”
The BOE eventually responded by admitting they made an oopsie that didn’t get caught until Adams raised the issue.
“The Board of Elections conducts rigorous and mandatory pre-qualification testing for every election. It has been determined that ballot images used for testing were not cleared from the Election Management System (EMS),” they explained, noting that the test results included “approximately 135,000 additional records.”…
Media Matters — needless to say — pushed the same attacks on Eric Adams for questioning what were clearly the sketchy election results, results which were ultimately withdrawn as false. pic.twitter.com/Frkzl86zOV
— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) June 30, 2021
And therein lies a big part of the problem. Noting discrepancies and demanding clarifications and corrections if necessary in vote totals – even raising legal challenges if you’re concerned enough – is not a “threat to democracy,” no matter how Democrats and the media try to spin it. Nor is objecting to the certification of election results, which is what Sens. Cruz, Hawley, and numerous other Republican members of Congress did on January 6th, something Democratic members of Congress also did as recently as 2001, 2005, and 2017 – all times when Republicans won their respective presidential elections.
Election integrity can be compromised either intentionally or accidentally. But this example illustrates how easily it can be compromised. This time the problem was obvious enough – and the Adams camp alert enough – that it was caught in time. But there’s no reason to imagine that’s ordinarily the case.
And yet, they will continue to claim that the 2020 presidential election was fair and square, not a bit of chicanery there, no, no, fairest election evah and if you disagree you’re a raciss, bigot, homophobic white nationalist. And “Shut up!”, they will further explain.
They just admitted vote fraud but swearsy it was a first time accident.
Note, this happened in New York, which has been much more conservative about technological innovations in tabulation, early voting, &c.
There are a number of problems here. One is excess use of postal ballots. Only about 10% of the population (if that) has an abiding problem which inhibits them from voting in person. Those in that 10% should have a renewable standing order for a postal ballot and the drop dead date for those ballots to be in the First Class mail to voters should be 15 September. NO SPOT ORDERS; if you’re in Cancun that day, tough. If a primary result is tied up in court, the supplementary mailing should go out priority mail, stat. In each county, the signature checks on each returned ballot should be undertaken in daily batches as they return and these should be done by the elections commissioners or their deputies with observers present and the ballots so checked locked away until the election day. All the checking should be done by mid-afternoon on election day and the checked ballots then transported to an arena to be counted so that the first round of tabulation is complete by the time the polls are closed. Rejected ballots and ballots which arrive after election day get put in a lock box and returned to sender with a note of regret. Especially if we are doing ranked-choice voting, there has to be a hard deadline after which a ballot arriving in the mail cannot deemed to have been validly cast. That hard deadline has got to be the election day or the day before.
Note, if news reports are correct they tabulated a bunch of sample ballots. Stupidity cannot be cured.
The Democrat party has strategically placed old Buick’s, Hudson Hornets and AMC Ramblers around the country with their trunks fill universal ballots to aid in the recount process. Just keep counting until you have enough votes. I want the states in question to do a forensic accounting of the 2020 election like Arizona. It is not because I think Biden will be removed from office and Trump gets placed back in the White House, but to prove how devious the Democrats are in any election. HR 1 memorializes cheating on a grand scale.
Another thing that needs to be done is to simplify the menu of contests. Move the ballot propositions and judicial elections to June, assign all non-judicial offices four year terms, have each office elected at the same berth on a quadrennial cycle, in every locality in the state. Also, require for any specialized executive or quasi executive position to be made elective, it may be so only consequent to a voter initiative and may remain so only if the decision of the initial referendum is confirmed by an automatic referendum at least once every thirty years. To take one example NYC has a pair of useless ceremonial offices which should disappear. They had some function under the old Board of Estimate, none now. Other places elect their town clerk for no reason anyone can articulate (except that some body of people thought it was a good idea 150 years ago).
Another thing you can do is replace party primaries with jungle primaries in any constituency where the party with the most registrants has more than 2x as many registrants as the runner up party. Primary elections followed by pro-forma general elections are a waste of everyone’s time and patience. NB, outside of Staten Island, the ratio of Democrats to Republicans exceeds 2:1 in every electoral constituency of every type in New York City. Leave party primaries to those segments of the state where there is actual party competition.
“The BOE eventually responded by admitting they made an oopsie that didn’t get caught until Adams raised the issue.”
An “oopsie”? Right…
Mark my words, there are going to be a lot more “oopsies” in 2022 and 2024. Some of them will even be caught and a few of those will be overturned.
The electoral game is rigged folks and cheaters keep doubling down until they’re physically forced to stop. Our leftist controlled ‘justice’ system is counting on our ‘judicial’ system to prevent the questioning that… “threatens our democracy”.
“Primary elections followed by pro-forma general elections are a waste of everyone’s time and patience.”
Not sure about that.
Well…maybe in a more perfect world; but how else could one have discovered that Democrats always strive to hold honest, fair and lawful elections?
Always. They simply are incapable of anything else; and if anyone doubts this, look how they went—and continue to go—that extra mile to show, when doubt was inexplicably expressed, how honest, forthright and transparent—don’t forget transparent—they strive to be.
(Yessir, the party of Trans!)
Actually, for a little fun—i.e., if you just happen to be a masochist—you might wanna Google “Obama + transparent” and then, for an encore, “Biden + transparent”. Sit back, grab a beer, etc., and click away….
And the Press will dutifully cover it up.
Look at Millhiser’s tweet. He is a columnist and LEGAL analyst for Vox.
His take “This is some Donald Trump shit”
Now we have two choices.
1) Said implication is correct. This is some Donald Trump shit and we have a serious problem with election integrity.
2) Said implication is false. In which case Millhiser’s analysis is 180 degrees wrong. And as his general take was echoed by numerous media outlets. They are clearly wrong. And there are numerous basic levels of reporting, comprehension, and integrity wrong with the media. Because as a group they once again made no effort to refute earlier incorrect reportage.
Frankly the state of this republic sickens me.
A radio commenter noted the day after the primary that since the votes are tabulated by computer, there is no reason why the “ranked choice” results would not be known as soon as the initial result is known. Why wait several weeks?
Opportunity for Graft comes immediately to mind, but since we all know that all elections run by Democrats are completely graft-free, there must be some other reason.
Well…maybe in a more perfect world; but how else could one have discovered that Democrats always strive to hold honest, fair and lawful elections?
In a jungle primary, all aspirants (Democratic, Republican, non-partisan) circulate designating petitions or place a deposit to get on a common ballot. Ranked-choice voting is one way of processing voter preferences. Another is a run off election between the top two finishers on the initial ballot. What you don’t have is separate Democratic and Republican heats. It’s well adapted to situations where one or another party (almost always the Republicans) is simply not competitive. The public would still have discovered the problems in the tabulation system, just at a later date as you’d have just one contest (with ranked-choice) or you’d have two closely spaced (with a runoff system).
Note, in a jungle primary with ranked-choice voting, Republicans would have the opportunity to put down Sliwa as their first choice, Adams as their 2d, and Stringer as their 3d. Donald Horowitz in his book on the alternate vote discusses the capacity to promote politicians who can appeal to the other side.
Always. They simply are incapable of anything else; and if anyone doubts this, look how they went—and continue to go—that extra mile to show, when doubt was inexplicably expressed, how honest, forthright and transparent—don’t forget transparent—they strive to be.
Elections administration in New York is above the median in quality. Room for improvement, but other states are a great deal worse.
Even among themselves, Democrats cheat, bamboozle, and flim-flam.
When I first read about this, I was amazed that one of the candidates was Donald Trump. Nope, just business as usual.
Once you realize that one purpose of government in the Democrat strongholds is to employ its foot soldiers, who are otherwise unemployable and would be homeless without their phony baloney jobs, it all makes sense. The other is to ensure that the bosses can collect graft and large pensions. There are other purposes but they are minor.
“This is some Donald Trump shit”
Truer words never spoken, now watch the Machine start to erase any questions or observations that would draw upon the myriad of parallels. Late hour election night ballot spikes in the hundreds of thousands, for instance, or the benefits realized by the preferred Machine candidate, an heir to the previous administration. Maybe it wasn’t a mistake, maybe it was a dry run. A black male law & order candidate, heaven forbid – he might have ideas of his own!
Has anybody demanded an audit yet? Will there be any curiosity, or will this be the distracting event to defuse the issue?
“Elections administration in New York is above the median in quality.”
Great to hear it! But I’ll go out on a limb here and wonder if that may be because “…one or another party (almost always the Republicans) is simply not competitive….”
IOW, the Democrats can “afford” to be “cleaner”? That is, I assume there is a relationship between the first quote and the second.
Which raises the question: How does one explain NY 12 last November? WTH happened there? And is that proof that the Democrats are prepared to do what they have to do WHEN necessary…? (Even in such great states as the Empire State?)
(And a bonus question: What are the chances that there are other similar Congressional Districts out there—other NY 12s—that are simply not allowed to get so “sloppy” (and out of control)—from the Democratic Party’s POV, that is)?
“… if news reports are correct they tabulated a bunch of sample ballots” – Art Deco
BIIIGGG IF.
“Maybe it wasn’t a mistake, maybe it was a dry run.”- Aggie
Somebody check my reasoning here; it’s late at night even in the Mountain Time Zone –
If the problem was due to Test Ballots being still in the machine uncleared, they would have to be the first ones “counted,” to which real ballots were added as they were cast.
(Hello IT wizards: how many of you do NOT have your programs check for a zero counter before adding new data?)
Since, presumably, the machines would have finished counting all the ballots actually cast on Primary Day before announcing the first round results,* then the low-number of 799,827, with Adams strongly leading, would already include the erroneous batch of test ballots.
Thus, the big jump (a week later**) in total number of votes to 941,832 that was supposed to give the reranked leaders, after dropping the lower-ranked candidates, STILL has not been explained.
And the discrepancy is 7005 votes higher than the alleged 135,000 test ballots.
(Or the respective error of 2005 for 140,000 – I’ve seen stories with both numbers.)
Did the anti-Adams cabal, unaware of the alleged snafu, panic too soon in bringing out their hidden boxes?
Bonus question: what are they doing to validate the recount?
They could be clearing to zero and running all the ballots through again (were they paper or only digital copies?), or they could be subtracting the alleged “known” test ballots — which I would not countenance at ALL.
*None of the stories I’ve read give both the total absolute numbers for all candidates, the total number for the front-runners, AND the percentages; very sloppy reporting.
This was the sequence of the mismatched total tallies.
https://www.nationalreview.com/news/nyc-elections-board-calls-for-patience-amid-discrepancy-in-mayoral-primary-results/
“After polls closed in the primary last week, Adams held close to 32 percent of the ballots cast on election day, while Bill de Blasio’s former counsel Maya Wiley held over 22 percent. However, in the retracted update released on Tuesday, Adams held 51.1 percent of the vote while former sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia held 48.9 percent.”
**Boatbuilder is correct IMO; storing all the ranked votes as the ballots are input would make the RCV calculations almost immediately available. Something that requires weeks of churning on today’s computers is on the order of running a moon shot with a pocket calculator.
IT guys again – is there something going on that I’m missing?
And why do the reranking BEFORE any absentee votes are counted at all? That’s a useless complication. I’ve read that in some (most?) elections, if the margin is greater than the number of absentee ballots, they aren’t counted at all (which would wreak havoc with the “popular vote over-riding electoral college vote” scheme; with the number of mail-ins that the Democrats want (and got in 2020), that should effectively end that little time-saving lay-by.
Forgot to clarify: since you have to know where all of the 2nd-througn-nth votes are going at each successive round, it makes no sense to do any of the recalculating of ranks without the absentee ballots in the total to start with.
To paraphrase a comment the Instant-man posts every now and again, the Democrats may not have stolen the 2020 Presidential election but they sure managed to make it look like they *wanted* to steal it, and now it looks like the same can be said of the NYC mayoral election.
Any complex system like ranked-choice voting is subject to the generation of non-intuitive results (this is also a feature/bug of the Electoral College) which may look like cheating but are actually accurate. The primary goals of an election system should be transparency of tabulation and rapidity of result, not the elusive goal of discovering the “actual preference” of voters. First-past-the-post is the gold standard for those but instant run-off (rank 2 of the candidates) might be a good compromise. It’s a swag since I don’t know NY election law that well but I’m betting the ‘rank 5’ used there is designed to help the various minor parties establish ballot access and obtain funding that’s based on the number of votes cast for their candidates in previous election cycles.
First-past-the-post is the gold standard
It’s not a gold standard of any kind. It’s just fairly simple to administer. It’s actually just about the worst method of officiating an electoral contest, especially so in multi-member constituencies.
Any complex system like ranked-choice voting is subject to the generation of non-intuitive results
Hare system tabulation is complex. However, it’s been used for generations in Australia and in Ireland, so it’s practical enough. The alternate vote is not complex at all, it just requires multiple rounds of tabulation. Neither does it generate results that are non-intuitive to anyone who devotes a minute of thought to contemplating them.
I don’t know NY election law that well but I’m betting the ‘rank 5’ used there is designed to help the various minor parties establish ballot access and obtain funding that’s based on the number of votes cast for their candidates in previous election cycles.
You’re wrong. Minor parties in New York have since at least 1935 established ballot access through meeting performance metrics in quadrennial gubernatorial elections. The threshhold has varied between 50,000 and 35,000 votes. Cross-endorsements have been allowed for generations, so ballot-line brokers maintain their business by piggybacking on one of the major party candidates.
Great to hear it! But I’ll go out on a limb here and wonder if that may be because “…one or another party (almost always the Republicans) is simply not competitive….”
The institutional features have existed for generations, and were in place in an era when the Republican Party was quite competitive statewide and dominant Upstate. There’s a great deal of sclerosis in matters of political architecture in New York. Mostly that’s disagreeable, but in the case of elections administration it’s been agreeable, as the state’s declined to be an early-adopter of troublesome technology. Mechanical lever machines were in use until 2009.
Once you realize that one purpose of government in the Democrat strongholds is to employ its foot soldiers, who are otherwise unemployable and would be homeless without their phony baloney jobs, it all makes sense.
Conventional patronage jobs in New York and everywhere else are a tiny fraction of the public sector workforce. (Edward Banfield discusses in one of his volumes the economy of political patronage and some reasons the practice was no longer sustainable). In New York, you’ll find discretionary appointments in the top echelon and in loci like the city clerk’s office and the board of elections. There are problems with public employment in New York in the mode of recruitment and employee discipline. You have overstaffing and mediocre performance. The notion that public employees in New York are a bunch of incipient vagrants who joined ward clubs has no reality outside your imagination.
Forgot to clarify: since you have to know where all of the 2nd-througn-nth votes are going at each successive round, it makes no sense to do any of the recalculating of ranks without the absentee ballots in the total to start with.
Again, the law needs to declare that postal ballots which do not arrive by the day before the election (in order to be subject to signature checks Tuesday morning) are not validly cast and thus must be locked up and then returned to sender after tabulations are finished and winners certified. And you need to limit their use to the segments of the electorate who actually need them. People who need a postal ballot should be getting one in the mail by 20 September at the latest if they live in the continental United States and 10 October at the latest if they live abroad.
I recall being told the rest of the world was laughing at us because Trump.
Not now, by golly.
“And the Press will dutifully cover it up. ”
Nice little article over at AT this morning detailing the 60 seconds of coverage of this subject within the over 6 hours of programming by the MSM shows lae night yesterday and this morning.
Art + Deco,
The issue isn’t the effectiveness of the NY electoral administration. It’s the fundamental honesty of any democrat controlled administration that is in question.
Figures don’t lie but liars figure.
Since the ideology that democrats embrace declares that, even when simply advantageous, lying and cheating are fully justified and a ‘moral good’, no administration of any kind in which they are in charge can be trusted.
It’s the equivalent of putting criminals in charge of banking.
Wouldn’t the salient question be why were all of these so-called “sample ballots” seemingly cast against Adams?
It’s the fundamental honesty of any democrat controlled administration that is in question.
Elections administration in New York is in each county in the hands of a two-person board – one appointed by the Democratic county chairman, one by the Republican. The state board of elections has four commissioners, two appointed by the Democratic state chairman, two by the Republican. The patronage positions therein are split down the middle.
Nefty – excellent question.
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