Adams Filed Petition for Court Oversight of NYC Election Count

(Bloomberg) -- Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams said his campaign filed a petition for court oversight of the New York City mayoral election count after the city’s board of elections removed results posted on Tuesday after a counting error.

“Today we petitioned the court to preserve our right to a fair election process and to have a judge oversee and review ballots, if necessary,” his campaign said in a statement on Wednesday. “We are notifying the other campaigns of our lawsuit through personal service, as required by law, because they are interested parties. We invite the other campaigns to join us and petition the court as we all seek a clear and trusted conclusion to this election.”

City election officials said they erroneously counted test ballots alongside election night results, producing about 135,000 “dummy ballots” that skewed results of the city’s first major test of a new ranked-choice voting system. Ranked-choice allows voters to select their five top candidates rather than picking just one.

The blunder forced the Board of Elections to retract preliminary results. The board said it would republish corrected results Wednesday that will show whether Adams will maintain his Election Day lead over former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia and civil rights lawyer Maya Wiley.

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