New York City Does Not Work

My goodness.

In Haiti people dip their finger in a purple dye after voting. No one with a purple finger can vote again. Easy, effective way to ensure voting security. Also, Haitians can count, 1, 2, 3…

Now, in New York City the best and the brightest approved "ranked voting" in a a referendum in 2019. The Democratic mayoral primary, the winner of which is the next mayor, was the first city election to "implement" ranked voting. On primary night Eric Adams held a 8.4% lead over Maya Wiley. Kathryn Garcia was third with 19.5% of the vote. This morning the city Board of Elections ran their electronic ranked vote counting machine and published that Eric Adams’ lead had shrunk to a vanishingly small percentage--over Kathryn Garcia, the third place finisher in votes cast on primary day. Maya Wiley, second then, was third now. The hell. Then late this afternoon the BoE announced a "discrepancy" in the ranked vote counting machine and after that took the results published in the morning down. New and improved! ranked voting results will be issued "starting on June 30," tomorrow. Results are due in mid-July.

The BoE's first mention of the bird that hit the air pump was:

NYC Board of Elections

@BOENYC

4h

We are aware there is a discrepancy in the unofficial RCV round by round elimination report. We are working with our RCV technical staff to identify where the discrepancy occurred. We ask the public, elected officials and candidates to have patience.

6:20 PM · Jun 29, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

To which one follower tweeted a seminal point,

Adrian IAB

@adriaeln

Replying to 

@BOENYC

My dude why didn’t you double check it before you posted it

6:21 PM · Jun 29, 2021·Twitter for iPhone

The board would not elaborate on the nature of the discrepancy; Valerie Vazquez-Diaz, a spokeswoman for the board, said only that it was related to the “difference in votes cast” between what was disclosed on primary night and on Tuesday.

And the air pump is almost sure to scatter bird feathers further when absentee ballots are counted.

Liberals, and I wave the yellow flag as vigorously as any, have a repetitive tendency to make things like clear binary choices and arithmetic more complicated than God intended them to be. Purple fingers, well, the very idea of Manhattanites walking around with purple fingers. If it's simple it's not worthy of consideration. Elections must be complex and if they're not we must complicate them up to New York City standards. They have done that and they look like bird brains.