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Adams leads mayoral race, but votes still need to be counted
Eric Adams speaks at a New York City primary mayoral election night party in Brooklyn, June 22, 2021. REUTERS/Andrew Kelly
TIMESLEDGER | QNS.COM | JUNE 25-JULY 1, 2021 23
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
It’s all over but the counting.
A roughly 75,000-vote lead
should give Brooklyn Borough
President Eric Adams some
comfort that he’s on track toward
winning the Democratic
nomination for New York City
mayor — but that isn’t a certainty
just yet.
In the old days, Adams
would have advanced to a twoperson
runoff for the nomination
with the second-place
finisher, civil rights attorney
Maya Wiley. But this is a new
era in New York, as voters in
the June 22 primary utilized
ranked-choice voting (RCV)
in the mayor’s race and other
citywide contests for the first
time — selecting more than
one candidate for office, in order
of their preference.
The preliminary vote count
from the New York City Board
of Elections of all ballots cast
in the early voting period and
on Primary Day gave Adams a
sizable advantage; he secured
just under a third of all votes
cast (31.6 percent) with 253,234
first-choice votes.
Wiley is a distant second
with 177,722 (22.2 percent) firstchoice
votes, followed closely
in third by former Sanitation
Commissioner Kathryn Garcia
with 155,812 (19.5 percent).
Adams, however, came
away sounding confident that
he won the race, though he
acknowledged that plenty of
ranked-choice votes have yet
to be counted.
“We know there’s going to
be twos and threes and fours;
we know that. But there’s
something else we know —
that New York City said our
first choice is Eric Adams,”
Adams said during his campaign
party Tuesday night.
Wiley, on the other hand,
said with confidence that the
people have not yet spoken in
full. “I don’t know what New
Yorkers have chosen tonight.
Not any one of us can because
the votes are still being counted,”
she told supporters at her
campaign party. “I will tell
you what is true: Every single
vote will count. Every single
New Yorker who voted will
count.”
The three top vote-getters
comprise 73.3 percent of the
799,827 early and Primary Day
first-place votes cast. With no
one candidate having received
a clear majority, the race now
goes to ranked-choice assessment
of the remaining 26.7
percent of votes cast.Under the
RCV system, each voter gets
to select up to five candidates
in order of preference. If no
candidate secures a majority
of votes based on voters’ firstchoice
selections, the ballots
are recounted in individual
rounds, with the candidate
with the least support in each
round eliminated. Voters who
had their first candidate eliminated
would then have their
second-choice votes counted
toward the candidate of their
choice. This system of counting
and eliminations goes
on until one candidate has
achieved a majority of votes.
The city’s Board of Elections
will now have to wade
through 213,059 ballots to see
the other choices voters made
in the mayoral race. Then
there’s the more than 80,000
absentee/mailed ballots that
New Yorkers sent, which have
yet to be counted at all.
In short, the city’s Board
of Elections has its work cut
out for them. With more than
300,000 votes to be counted or
recounted, it may take several
weeks before a definitive
winner of the mayor’s race is
determined. Garcia and Wiley
could potentially pick up tens
of thousands of lesser-choice
votes from voters of eliminated
candidates such as entrepreneur
Andrew Yang (93,291
votes), City Comptroller Scott
Stringer (40,244 votes), nonprofit
founder Dianne Morales
(22,221), former Citicorp executive
Ray McGuire (18,503) and
former Housing and Urban
Development Secretary Shaun
Donovan (17,903).
The questions are how
many of these voters bothered
to rank additional candidates,
how many ranked Adams on
their ballots — and whether
Garcia or Wiley gain enough
lesser votes to overcome the
gap. One thing is certain: whoever
wins the Democratic
primary for mayor will face
Curtis Sliwa in the November
general election. The Guardian
Angels founder and radio
talk show host won the Republican
nomination for mayor
outright on Tuesday.
Editor’s note: Figures reflect
preliminary numbers from the
New York City Board of Elections,
posted at 1:48 a.m. on
June 23, with 96.62 percent of
scanners reported.
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