Council Hopefuls Face Longer Wait For Results After BOE Error

By Sam Bojarski, The Haitian Times

July 06, 2021

One week after polls closed, New York City’s mayoral race was thrown into disarray when the Board of Elections, or BOE, released erroneous results populated with voter test data. The error was swiftly corrected, but the resulting mayhem has also delayed city council results, candidates say.

Candidates like Rita Joseph, a Haitian-American teacher running to represent District 40 on the City Council, now must wait longer for her race’s results. On July 1, before the BOE announced it would not be releasing preliminary ranked-choice results that day, Joseph said she still felt “really good” about winning the race she leads.

“I’m the only candidate that is not attached to some type of establishment,” said Joseph, who was anticipating the release of preliminary results before they were postponed. “That’s why a lot of people were drawn to this campaign.”

About 2,310 absentee ballots are left to count in the District 40 election, according to the BOE. Those ballots will not be tallied until July 6 at the earliest, after the preliminary results from in-person voting are released.

With 99 percent of votes counted, about 20,058, Joseph retains her initial lead with 25.23 percent of first-choice votes. Josue Pierre stands in second place with 20.31 percent.

In the race for Council District 46, where 16,365 votes have been counted, Mercedes Narcisse remains on top with 35.78 percent of the votes. Contenders Shirley Paul and Gardy Brazela remain in second and third place, respectively. With 98.11 percent of the votes counted, Paul has received 16.46 percent of the votes and Brazela 14.53 percent. About 1,900 absentee ballots still remain to be counted.

Although she is about 19 points behind, Paul said she is proud of her campaign and that she doesn’t mind waiting for results, as long as the public can trust the final outcome.

“A lot of the other candidates had very heavy institutional support and we didn’t, and we emerged to be number two,” said Paul. “We’re hopeful that we have a lot of twos and threes and absentee ballot support.”

In Queens, Nantasha Williams holds a decisive lead for Council District 27. Out of 17,593 votes cast, Williams received 35.55 percent of first-choice votes. Her closest challengers trail more than 20 percentage points behind, with James Johnson receiving 11.86 percent and Rene Hill 10.15 percent. In total, 99 percent of the in-person votes cast in the district have been counted. There are still 2,690 absentee ballots to count, according to the BOE.

Based on early results soon after the June 22 primary, Farah Louis won the race for District 45 and Chi Ossé of District 36 commands a strong lead. In the latter race, Ossé has captured 35.23% of first-choice votes compared to second-place competitor Henry Butler, who has 23.86%.

A June 29 error by the BOE continues to impact the date when preliminary city council results will be released. The BOE released a statement saying that “the voting reporting error was unacceptable and we apologize to the voters and the campaigns for the confusion.”

After erroneously counting 135,000 sample ballots in the mayor’s race on June 29, the BOE released new preliminary ranked-choice voting results the following day upon correcting the error. These results showed Eric Adams still in the lead with 51.1% of the vote compared to his closest competitor Kathryn Garcia, who had 48.9%.

About 125,000 absentee ballots have yet to be counted. The results are unofficial, and a winner in the mayoral race is not expected to be declared until mid-July.

The Haitian Times is an independent news organization that covers stories of interest to the Haitian Diaspora. Our geographic coverage is focused in the New York City Metropolitan area, South Florida and Haiti.