10 JUNE 24, 2021 RIDGEWOOD TIMES WWW.QNS.COM
NYC’s #1 Source for Political & Election News
Adams leads mayoral race, but plenty of vote counting remains
BY ROBERT POZARYCKI
RPOZARYCKI@SCHNEPSMEDIA.COM
@ROBBPOZ
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 two-person runoff
for the nomination with the secondplace
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) first-choice
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
Eric Adams speaks at a New York City primary mayoral election night party in Brooklyn, June 22, 2021.
Photo by Andrew Kelly/REUTERS
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’ first-choice
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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