NYC mayoral contenders file lawsuits seeking ballot review

NEW YORK (AP) — All three candidates who are still in the running in New York City’s Democratic mayoral primary have filed legal actions seeking the right to review the ongoing ranked choice vote tally.

Civil rights attorney Maya Wiley filed a lawsuit Thursday in state court in Brooklyn seeking to preserve her right to challenge the election results and asking for all of the ballots that were “cast or attempted to be cast” to be saved.

“This is a wide open race and as is standard procedure, my campaign filed a petition to preserve the right to challenge the results should we believe it is necessary,” Wiley said in a statement Friday.

Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and former city sanitation commissioner Kathryn Garcia filed similar legal actions on Wednesday. That was the day after New York City’s Board of Elections posted vote totals for the June 22 primary that erroneously included test data and then retracted them.

Revised vote counts posted Wednesday showed Adams, a former police captain and state senator, leading Garcia by 14,755 votes. Wiley was practically tied with Garcia, falling just 347 votes behind in the ranked choice analysis.

None of the other 13 Democrats on the mayoral primary ballot were close enough to catch up. Former presidential candidate Andrew Yang, an early frontrunner, conceded on election night.

The corrected primary results don’t include nearly 125,000 absentee ballots that are being counted this week. With Adams’ thin lead, Garcia or Wiley could catch up when absentee ballots are added starting on July 6.

The winner of the Democratic primary will be heavily favored over Republican and Guardian Angels founder Curtis Sliwa because Democrats outnumber Republicans in the city by 7 to 1.