Trump Ties New York City Board of Elections Mistake to 2020 Loss: ‘Nobody Will Ever Know Who Really Won’
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Former President Donald Trump seized on the mistakes made by the New York City Board of Elections in prematurely releasing early ranked voting results, in a naked effort to create more confusion and uncertainty about his 2020 general election loss to President Joe Biden.
The New York City Board of Elections rolled out a new ranked-choice voting system for the mayoral primary race earlier this month, and on Tuesday released preliminary results that caused a rather significant shockwave in political circles.
The early results showed Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, who had previously been considered a heavy favorite based on early polling, only 16,000 votes ahead of Sanitation Department Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, with roughly 125,000 absentee ballots uncounted. The Board of Elections data release incorrectly listed Maya Wiley as “eliminated,” which they later deleted. But that wasn’t the least of the mistakes.
As the Adams campaign pointed out, there was a discrepancy in total votes listed, which the Board of Elections eventually noted was a mistake in ballot counting. It turns out that the BOE did not remove roughly 100,000 test ballots before the actual votes were counted, which they revealed via a statement.
The most charitable way to describe the NYC Board of Elections’ handling of the primary voting results was imprecise. A more accurate word might be disastrous.
Never one to miss an opportunity to make the story about himself, Trump tried to tie the confusion to the election he lost in November, which he has called “rigged,” “stolen,” and a “hoax.” (It was none of those things.)
Trump released a statement from his Save America PAC that focused on the uncertainty of the NYC primary race, which he seemed to amplify to include election results in general.
“The fact is, based on what has happened, nobody will ever know who really won,” he wrote before pivoting to his own baseless grievances. “The Presidential Race was a Scam and a Hoax with numbers and results being found that are massive, shocking, and determinative. Watch the mess you are about to see in New York City, it will go on forever.”
Trump’s statement:
Just like in the 2020 Presidential Election, it was announced overnight in New York City that vast irregularities and mistakes were made and that Eric Adams, despite an almost insurmountable lead, may not win the race. The fact is, based on what has happened, nobody will ever know who really won. The Presidential Race was a Scam and a Hoax with numbers and results being found that are massive, shocking, and determinative. Watch the mess you are about to see in New York City, it will go on forever. They should close the books and do it all over again, the old-fashioned way, when we had results that were accurate and meaningful.
There is next to zero chance that the primary election will be done-over, as Trump suggests. And the mistake by the Board of Elections is a straightforward one to fix by simply deleting the test ballots already in the system. There is no concrete reason to distrust the results of the new ranked-choice ballots, as long as errors are transparently addressed.
