On Wednesday, Eric Adams filed a lawsuit to reserve his right to have a court evaluate the ballots in the Democratic mayoral primary. The action, filed in Kings County Supreme Court, protects the campaign's ability to contest the results when they are certified.
Though such legal action is standard, it comes only one day after Adams and other Democratic candidates criticized the New York City Board of Elections for including 135,000 test ballots in a preliminary tally of the Democratic primary's ranked-choice results.
Eric Adams campaign files lawsuit
The Eric Adams campaign said in a statement that they positioned the court to preserve the right to a fair election and to have someone to oversee and review ballots if needed. "We invite the other campaigns to join us and petition the court as we all seek a clear and trusted conclusion to this election," the statement continued.
Andrew Yang filed a similar complaint before the election; but it was withdrawn after he conceded, finishing fourth in the first round of voting. A candidate must initiate a challenge within 10 days, following the primary, before all of the results are finalized, according to state law.
That is why, according to Jerry H. Goldfeder, a well-known election lawyer who is not representing any candidate in the mayoral race, many candidates file so-called prophylactic lawsuits.
The lawsuit was the first since the city election board had issued a flawed simulation of how qualified voting would take place following the first number of votes in person on early and election day. The board accidentally counted 135,000 dummy ballots, rendering the simulation worthless and perhaps deceptive, NY Daily News reported.
The now-discredited vote counts tighten with Adam's shrinking to about 2% over Garcia, who passed Wiley in second place. It is unclear if the pattern will be the same when the board starts redoing the simulation without the dummy ballots. There remain around 130,000 mail-in votes totally uncounted. They were to be sent back to the election officials by Tuesday; but without giving any justification for the extended delay, they are not to be tabulated until next week.
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New York Mayoral election results
Per PIX11, following the vote of Andrew Yang, who has since retired from the campaign, García was in a stronger situation than Wiley. Corrected numbers on Friday indicated that the former NYPD captain Adams received just 14,755 votes in the first round of his closest competitor Kathryn Garcia.
Those statistics have also put the left-wing Maya Wiley in the lead, after showing that she was behind Garcia with just 347 votes. Nearly 125,000 absentee votes have not yet been tabulated, which means that both Adams might be counted by Garcia or Wiley.
These ballots are scheduled for July 6 and are expected to be taken within weeks. Manhattan holds the highest number of such uncensored votes - about 39,000 - and Adams ended third, maybe with additional difficulty in the first round behind García and Wiley. On Wednesday, the campaign of Adams claimed to have a "significant lead" on its competitors, as per Daily Mail.
Related Article: New York Mayoral Race: Polls Close But Final Results May Not Come Out Until July
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