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Brian Lehrer: It's the Brian Lehrer show on WNYC. Good morning everyone. Let's get right to it because holy cow, the New York City Board of Elections made a comic book level mess up for the ages yesterday, when it released, what they said was all the rank choice rankings of all the people who voted in person. Only problem was it was all those voters rankings plus the ones on about 135,000 or 140,000 tests ballots that weren't actually votes in the election. Now, maybe we should say from the start, what this does not seem to be. That is election fraud by any candidate, no, or hacking by Russia, no, or any left wing or right wing or any other wing interest group trying to sell chaos? No.

It looks at least on first blush, like the Board of Elections just messed up. If you followed the news hour by hour yesterday, it looked during the late afternoon, like people second and third place votes had allowed Kathryn Garcia to come within 2% points of Eric Adams, merely a 15,000 vote difference with around 130,000 absentee ballots still to count. Then the Adams campaign noticed that the total number of in-person votes was way higher than what the Board of Elections had said before. Before too long, the Board of Elections had to say, "Yes, you're right, there's a discrepancy here." Then later in the evening, they said it was because they included test ballots or sample ballots in that count. Whoa.

That leaves more questions than answers. With me now to try to help make sense of it is none other than Errol Louis host of Inside City Hall on Spectrum News, New York 1, he's also a Daily News columnist. You'll remember he was moderator of the first Democratic mayoral primary debate in may. Then I was also a questioner in. Hi Errol, welcome back to WNYC.

Errol Louis: Good to be with you Brian. What a day?

Brian Lehrer: This is not the conversation either of us thought we were signing up for this morning. We thought it would simply be to crunch the numbers from this phase of ranked choice voting results. Holy cow, what just happened here?

Errol Louis: What happened is pretty much what you described. There are a couple of different conversations that are going on and it's a little disappointing and disheartening as a New Yorker to see that this is national news. It's being talked about on CNN, and on Morning Joe, which means in turn that it's global news at this point. People in probably Cairo, and Melbourne, and London are seeing this stuff. In the end, it wasn't so much in my opinion about a systemic problem, or structural problem, so much as it's exactly what it sounds like. Somebody screwed up, didn't clear out some bad data and they spat out that bad data along with some accurate data in a preliminary tally of ballots and they caused a lot of confusion along the way.

Brian Lehrer: What exactly are tests ballots or sample ballots, if you've come to understand that yet, and how are they actually used?

Errol Louis: Something that you see all the time, actually, I don't know how much of the guts you get into over at WNYC Brian. When we're looking at the Associated Press ticker, for example, meaning that the little crawl that goes across your screen and shows all of the results on election night from all of the different races. They start out by sending out a signal that has fake numbers in it, just to try and make sure that the transmission is happening and that it's handling real data, and that what they typed in is what actually appears on the screen.

By analogy, it sounds like from the explanation by the Board of Election they put in, they scanned in some ballots that were not accurate ballots, that were not real ballots. So that they could make sure that they could do all of the right manipulations and total them up and go through different rounds of rank choice voting. Because it is driven by a software algorithm that finds the lowest vote total, drops the first candidate off, redistributes to the other. It's somewhat complicated up the process and they were making sure that they could do that. They had this junk data, let's call it that, in the system. Then ideally they would have taken it out, purged it and then put it into real data and then reported it, but they failed to purge it. We got real data mixed with junk data and all of it was reported out at the same time yesterday.

Brian Lehrer: Did the so-called junk data include actual names that were listed as rank choice votes. For example, the numbers that we can go over to some degree, I don't know if we should just ignore them for another day until they put out the revised numbers. The numbers that they did put out yesterday that showed Kathryn Garcia almost catching up to Eric Adams. Did those junk ballots or numbers include sample ballots that were filled out disproportionately with Garcia getting a lot of second choice votes that would have contributed to that apparent closing of the gap?

Errol Louis: I think it's safe to assume that either by name, or by position on the ballot, that that space was filled with a lot of junk data disproportionately. One place to go a little further down the ballot, this was brought to my attention by one of the 13 candidates in this race. Aaron Foldenauer, was tweeting about this. What he pointed out was that in the week between when we got the early vote and the primary night ballot and yesterday the number for Shaun Donovan, something like tripled. Went up by six folds I think actually, and that's highly unusual.

Now, I don't know if the junk data just threw a bunch of votes to Shaun Donovan specifically, or if it was-- And my guess would be more likely a placeholder. That they just distributed a bunch of votes somewhat randomly across the 13 candidates, or whatever number of phony candidates they had when they were doing their tests and that it just got mixed in with everything else. Again, I am just guessing because I don't know. Frankly, the Board of Elections could tell you exactly what happened or how it happened. That's what the effect of it was looking at the data

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, we can take your phone calls with comments, or questions, or just venting at this historic screw up. For Errol Louis from New York 1, 646-435-7280, 646-435-7280. On the mess up itself, or any of the underlying politics or electoral issues around it. 646-435-7280, or tweet @BrianLehrer. The results Errol, as they were released yesterday we're supposed to take rank choice voting into account for all the people who voted in person. The absentee ballots are yet to be counted. What they released on election night was only the first place votes.

With the rank choices, we were told yesterday that Kathryn Garcia had almost caught up to Eric Adams because so many people who voted for Maya Wiley first, or voted for Andrew Yang first listed Garcia second. Many fewer of those Wiley or Yang voters listed Eric Adams as their second choice. Should we just disregard this entirely this morning and wait for the new numbers, or is there anything to analyze here?

Errol Louis: I was not entirely disregarded just because I have a hunch that the fact that 135,000-140,000 is much less than the bulk of true votes that were in the system when they reported the numbers yesterday.

Brian Lehrer: Which is still like 800,000 true votes, right?

Errol Louis: Exactly. The pattern that you've described will probably make itself felt. It might not be quite as clear, it might not be quite as aggressive. Again, because we don't know if they randomly just assigned a whole bunch to Kathryn Garcia, it may not break in her favor. Certainly the dynamic is worth thinking about from a what if standpoint, what could happen if a lot of people pick a particular candidate as their number two. That's how suddenly and how importantly the outcome can change. That's how it can make this election one that will be decided as they say on paper, meaning the absentee ballots will tell the story.

I think that's worth keeping in mind. I don't know if it's worth too much more analysis, since I lost seven hours of my life doing a lot of analysis of what turned out to be inaccurate data. I talked to Kathryn Garcia and we had a conversation about what that conversation meant, and on and on and on and on. I do think that what we saw is likely to make itself felt in some way today. It won't be probably quite as dramatic. I think you'll perceive the same pattern. I'd be very surprised, for example, if the test run that we get today that we're scheduled to get today gives you a different order of candidates than what we saw yesterday. That would be surprising.

Brian Lehrer: The most common question that we're getting so far on Twitter is this, I'll read one version of it from one tweet, "Why were there any results announced yesterday at all? Why did the Board of Elections release results that didn't count, or maybe a better way to put that is release results that were incomplete, rather than wait till they included the absentee ballots?"

Errol Louis: Well, look, here's the thing. There was a lot of pressure from media organizations, including Spectrum News, I don't know if WNYC got in on any of this. We did what we are supposed to do as news media, we put pressure on the Board of Elections. We said, "We want the data, whatever you've got, however incomplete, it might be, we want it as quickly as you can give it to us. We want to err on the side of transparency."

As a simple thought experiment, Brian, imagine this, this very important and consequential primary takes place. Then the board of election says, "Come see us on July 12, we're going to do whatever we do, we're not going to let you see any of it, we're not going to show you any partial results. Although we will have partial results and we'll just tie it all up in a nice bow and serve it to you and that will be the results of the election, take it or leave it." I think people would be pretty upset about that and they'd have every right to be.

I'd also say as a practical matter, as we were trying to figure this stuff out in real-time yesterday, I think we may have helped the Board of Elections spot and detect this problem. Because it was shortly after they released their information, that on Twitter, and on New York 1, and in messages I started getting, including from candidates. We started hearing from people saying like, "Wait, there's something wrong with the data." Aaron Foldenauer took to Twitter and begin to contact people on our staff. I had election lawyer, Jerry Goldfeder, on the air with me live, and we were trying to make sense of it from that standpoint.

Michelle Caruso-Cabrera, one of the candidates, was part of our analysis, as far as what the data showed, suggested that a lot of her number two votes went to Corey Johnson. Who politically and philosophically is quite different from her. She contested that, she said, "Well, look, I don't think that that's what happened." She had a different interpretation of those, what we now know were fake numbers. I think we were helpful in this process. When Eric Adams put out a public statement saying, "There's a huge discrepancy, and we want the board of elections to fix it." I think that was helpful, too.

I'm going to be one of the few people, I don't know if I'm in the minority, maybe your listeners feel differently, but I feel like I'll take whatever data I could get. We'll try and create as helpful of a process as possible, which I would argue yesterday help spot and identify a data problem that the Board of Elections might otherwise not have detected. Imagine waiting until July 12th, and then finding out that they had junk data mixed in with the real data. I think we helped fix that problem and that's what transparency gives you.

Brian Lehrer: I see your point. Eric Adams has said along, he's against rank choice voting, because the Board of Elections may not be up to it and then it will dampen trust in the voting system. Which is the last thing any place in America needs right now with Donald Trump and everything. Was that always a stand in his own electoral interest, or do you think he had a more global point to make there all along, and now we're seeing it play out?

Errol Louis: I think the latter might be the case, because there are a number of officials, the Black, Latino, and Asian caucus of the city council, for example. They put out a statement saying that "We didn't want any of this to happen all along." It was kind of an I told you so sort of a statement. Where they were saying they have grave concerns about the level of education that was given to voters. They had great concerns about the ability of the board of elections to execute this properly. Frankly, if you read between the lines, it sounds like they're going to continue their efforts to try and change the law again, so that rank choice voting goes away, or is substantially modified.

Now, I think in the case of Eric Adams, he was always kind of that point of view, didn't like the idea, was somewhat suspicious of it. Depending on how you see the city and our tribal identities as they express themselves in the vote, in a what is now a majority-minority city. One could see why Black, Latino or Asian candidates might think that, well, perhaps this is some scheme to make it harder to elect candidates of color. I don't think that's what it is. I have interviewed and talked to the people who wanted rank choice voting to be implemented here. There are a lot of different ways that you can look at it and I think the concerns are genuine. Of course, when you're talking about a politician in the middle of a campaign, those genuine concerns almost always dovetail perfectly with their political interest Brian, let's put it that way.

Brian Lehrer: Right. I think to continue the story, the narrative, that you were just laying out of who's for and who's against rank choice voting at all. Aren't a lot of the advocates of rank choice voting for it, because they say it is in the interest of minority voters? For example, it seems like we're about to go, this is gender, not race, but we're about to go from a city council that has 14 women out of 51 seats, to one that has a majority of women in city council positions. Some advocates are attributing that to rank choice voting, because a lot more people had an incentive to get into any of these races. Because there was more of a chance of winning with the rank choice system for somebody who didn't come from the political machine and that that would generally benefit voters of color too.

Errol Louis: Yes, the advocates of rank choice voting have made a number of claims, not all of which really hold up in my opinion, but that is certainly one of them. They argue that it would increase turnout, it would increase participation, it would give us more candidates, the assumption being that more candidates is better than fewer candidates. Frankly, I'm not entirely sure about that, and I mean that seriously.

Brian, when you and I were trying to figure out how to make this debate work with eight candidates, one thing that was clear, I think to everybody watching it. Was that only a certain amount of time is going to be given to any given issue. It allows candidates to give you the slip, frankly, when it comes time to try to wrestle them to the ground and really get some depth on what they think or what they know about certain issues.

Brian Lehrer: Sure. Do you think that without rank choice, those eight candidates would not have all been in the race?

Errol Louis: You know what it is, Brian, there's something that happens, and I'm going to just make this argument by analogy. In presidential contest, you start out with a pretty crowded field, then you have Iowa, then you have New Hampshire, then you have South Carolina. Around that time, people realize, "You know what, this isn't going my way, and I can't afford to keep doing this. It's not in the cards, I'm going to fold my tent. This is too extensive of an undertaking." What we have done in Reform New York now, taking all of these reforms together, not blaming anybody, and not disparaging any given reform.

You get an eight to one match, so now money is not much of an issue. In fact, you have a disincentive to drop out, because the minute you drop out that eight to one match goes away and now you can't necessarily pay your workers and you can't necessarily pay your rent bill and pay for your equipment and take some time to figure out your life. They dropped out for that reason. Nobody dropped out, because there's rank choice voting, where it's like, "Well, what the heck, I can influence this in some way, I can put my philosophy forward. Who cares if there's, 8 people who each get 45 seconds to explain what they're going to do about affordable housing, I get to do my thing."

I guess it's good for the candidate. I guess it's good for participation if you assume that more candidates is always better, and candidates never dropping out is better for the process. I'll take a further step as far as my skepticism around all of this with rank choice voting, Brian. We've had and you've participated in some of these too, where you have under the old system of runoff if nobody in the city-wide race gets 40%. Imagine that were the case now, imagine we have the old system now, Eric Adams and one other person, maybe Maya Wiley, maybe Kathryn Garcia, would now take two weeks to have a runoff.

During that two-week period, they'd have a head-to-head debate in-depth, maybe one hour with just two candidates, a clear choice for voters about two different philosophies and two different candidates. It would really clarify a lot of issues as far as what your real choices are, and then we'd put it to a vote one more time. That doesn't happen under rank choice voting. You have to try and assume and you've got paper boy prints in there at the same time, and you've got to try and sort all of this out. I think the clarifying nature of the old style runoff is something that would have probably come in handy right about now.

Not to say that we should overturn the system or that I'm against ranked choice voting, please don't bother me on Twitter about that everybody. It is something that I wished the advocates of ranked choice voting would raise their hand and at least take some responsibility for that. Say, "Yes, we still want that to go away. We don't want to pay the money." It's supposed to be more expensive, that was the other thing. We were supposed to be saving money by not having those extensive runoffs under the old system like I just described.

Nothing is more expensive than keeping 13 candidates in while you're paying them eight to one match to go all the way to the last day. That's going to be pretty expensive too and frankly, the screw up we just saw at the Board of Elections is a little bit expensive. The costs argument, I'm not so sure about either.

Brian Lehrer: We'll continue in a minute with Errol Louis from New York 1and Daily News columnist, and we'll include your calls as we continue to talk about the New York primary results mess up yesterday and what we actually know. Stay with us.

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Brian Lehrer on WNYC with Errol Louis Inside City Hall, host on New York 1, also a Daily News columnist, also teaches at the Newmark School of Journalism at CUNY and has a podcast called Let's See. Is it we decide or you decide?

Errol Louis: You decide I'm not in it. I just try and provide helpful information and we'll let the voters sort it out.

Brian Lehrer: Everybody decides. Craig in Westchester, you're on WNYC. You decide Craig. Hi.

Craig: Hi. Thank you so much Brian. I was wondering if you and your guest might be able to clarify something for me. In November, 2020, during the presidential election, you had reported that the Board of Elections in New York mailed out about a 100,000 ballots to the incorrect addresses, which was a screw up. Is this the same Board of Elections that's involved in this problem as well? Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Thank you. Errol, I don't remember that particular problem, do you.

Errol Louis: I don't remember those dimensions, but I find it eminently believable. I'm sure it happens all the time. Listen, I have to tell you. What happened yesterday while inconvenient, I would put it, sort of the back of the top five screw ups by the Board of Elections. I think of it as much less serious than the long, long lines. I remember waiting, I think the reelect of the Presidential Obama administration race in 2012. I think it was on line for about 90 minutes.

To me that's a screw up. That can affect the the outcome. People get discouraged, people go home, people are inconvenienced, people lose faith in the system. Yesterday, I don't know. Let the first member of your audience who has never mistakenly sent an email or put data to where it didn't belong, let them cast the first tweet. You know what I mean? It's a problem, but I guess to answer the caller, yes, the general point is that the Board of Elections does screw up.

They've purged voters improperly, they kept people waiting on long lines. They've run a patronage operation when competence was readily available at hand. They've turned down money that would have helped them modernize their operation. They can be faulted for a lot of different things. It doesn't make me one bit less interested in, and adoring of American democracy and democracy in New York city. We just have a Board of Elections that needs to get fixed. If we all decided together, we wanted to put real pressure on our legislature to fix this, it could be fixed fairly quick.

Brian Lehrer: Here's that story that the caller was referring to. By the way, I just looked it up, this is from CNN, September 29th, 2020, "A misprint by a third party vendor caused nearly 100,000 Brooklyn voters to receive absentee ballot return envelopes with the wrong address and names printed on them," the New York city Board of Election said. Voters will be sent new ballots." I'm also thinking of one from Brooklyn from a few years ago, Errol uncovered by our Brigid Bergin, where thousands of voters were incorrectly thrown off the voter rolls and had to be restored. I think that was in advance of the 2016 presidential primary. Was that a Board of Elections problem?

Errol Louis: It was. In fact, a member of the board, I think-- They traced it to a high ranking staffer, I believe at the Board of Election who subsequently either lost their job, or decided to take retirement. That was the kind of a screw up, that's analogous to what we saw yesterday, that somebody somewhere screwed up. Not maliciously, not with intent to change the outcome of any election. It's cold comfort in a way, and it's a mortgage humor, but I have to say, I don't know if they could steal an election, even if they wanted to. The structure doesn't lend itself to that. There's just not enough efficiency down there to actually steal an election.

By the way, you're jogging my memory. Yes, I remember now there was a upstate firm. I believe it was in upstate New York firm, that had the contract to help make this absentee ballot process work, and they just completely screwed up. They trace it right back to a particular factory and a particular piece of machinery. The Board of Elections said, "Well, it was the vendor's fault." Of course that's no excuse at all. We expect our Board of Elections to manage all of the election process, including the procurement of really important things like how to distribute absentee ballot.

Brian Lehrer: Can you explain to people what the Board of Elections is. I gather it's neither a function of city government, nor of state government, is that right?

Errol Louis: No. The Board of Elections is really a creature of the state. It's subject to state election law. If you go to state election law and read it, there's a state Board of Elections, which in crucial ways is superior to and in command of the city's Board of Election, we're not entirely independent. For example, one reason we had to do really laborious time-consuming hand counts of special elections for city council earlier this year. Was because the state Board of Elections had not approved the software that would be used to run the rank choice voting calculation.

Until they approved it, we were forbidden by law firm from implementing it. We did these crazy kinds of hand counts and then they finally approved it. Then we misused it yesterday. The state law that could change this in a way that might satisfy some critics that the Board of Election. It would really be a matter of changing the entire structure of it so that we don't have what's right now, a checks and balances system in which you have equal numbers, and this is true all over the state. We have equal numbers of Republican and Democratic Board of Election members.

The assumption then being that they'll all keep an eye on each other and not give either parties members any unfair advantage. That perhaps well-meaning, or well-intended, or savvy structure, unfortunately also means that it's a patronage pit. People who are party insiders, who don't have any particular skill or interest in acquiring the skill, frankly, because they're going to get the job through politics. They get dumped into these Boards of Elections offices all over the place, and some are competent and some are not.

It's not like they're automatically all bad people or unable to do their jobs properly. Where it opens the board up to charge is that they could do a better job if there was less politics involved. I personally am not so sure about that.

Brian Lehrer: You mentioned a few minutes ago, the moment a few years ago, when the Board of Elections was offered money from the city to use to improve their service, and they turned it down. What organization turns down funding?

Errol Louis: The organization turns down funding that does not want strings attached. In this case, the board, I think, properly perceived that both Mayor de Blasio who offered money and his predecessor Mayor Bloomberg, who also offered money. That they wanted to basically make it a captive agency, make it subservient to the mayor. Then their little unexamined life of patronage hires, and salaries that you and I don't really track or know about, all of that would go away and so they decided they'd rather stick with what they have. Understandable from the point of bureaucratic self-preservation, not so good from the point of view of getting them resources in some cases.

Now, they do have a track record of dealing with some of the reforms that have been suggested. They've digitized to an extent, I think everybody who voted in the last couple of cycles probably noticed that they have iPads. They have the ability to scan in, instead of trying to explain to them that Louis is spelled LO-U-I-S instead of L-E-W-I-S. Which was the bane of my existence every single time I voted for, 30 years. They have fixed some things. We get results much faster than we used to on primary night or election night, they are doing more or less what we have asked of them with the resources that we have given them.

If we the people decide to rise up and give them even more resources, more guidance, maybe a different structure, maybe try and take some of the political patronage out of it, we'll get a different outcome. I won't say it's a better outcome, because here again, I've dealt with the department of motor vehicles. I've dealt with city agencies and state agencies that don't function so well. If this is just one more of those, okay, let's get some different management, let's get some different procedures. Maybe we need some law changes, but let's not make the Board of Elections into our perennial whipping boy and act as if we have no ability to make it better or use it as an excuse to tout our pet reform. Saying, "Oh, let's have, not partisan voting, or let's move election day to January." You know what I mean? That's not really what the problem is.

Brian Lehrer: One more call. Gary on the East Village, you're on WNYC with Errol Louis. Hi Gary.

Gary: Hey guys, how you doing?

Brian Lehrer: Okay.

Errol Louis: Good morning.

Gary: I just wanted to ask a bigger picture question, we've just been talking about it, but in general, how badly do you think this story is going to affect the national narratives? We already see Trump tweeting in support Adams saying, "We'll never know who won this election." Then you see Tom Cotton talking about it. We have a real situation because now they will always be able to point and say, look in one city, we had 135,000 "Dummy votes" and I only lost by 45,000 across three states. Of course this whole thing could be rigged. It's like a real problem I feel like.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, Gary, it's a good point. I don't know if we view Trump weighing in on this as dark comic relief at this point, or another step in the fall of American democracy. Trump did release a statement that said, "Just like in the 2020 Presidential Election, it was announced overnight in New York City that vast irregularities and mistakes were made. Nobody will ever really know who won." Obviously he's using that to bolster his big lie that nobody actually knows who won the Presidential Election, which is not at all true.

Errol Louis: I hate to go back to this old trope, but it really does fit, and you've interviewed people who have said the same thing, Brian. This is similar to what you hear with Russia. Just try and spoil the very idea, the very notion that you could have a legitimate democratic vote. Oh, no one will ever know. It's fine to say the Board of Election are helpless. It's fine to say the Board of Elections should be restructured or even abolished. It is not fine to say, no one will ever know. That's literally just not true based on the facts.

Donald Trump has an agenda. He does not want people to believe that elections can be done in a way that is fair and accurate. The only reason he said that is not necessarily because he believes it, but because he was voted out of office and he wants people to think that he wasn't voted out of office. So yes, it's part of the big lie. I don't think people should give that kind of thinking in those kinds of nefarious motives one bit of oxygen. We know what we know. Here's what we know, we know that they screwed up. It literally could have been like the summer intern. We'll find out from them at some point.

We know that there's a management problem over there, but if somebody wants to engage in that kind of loose rhetoric, I would advise all of your listeners try and engage that person and have a real dialogue. It's like, okay, so the Board of Elections, no one will ever know. Who is served by that? What was the motive? Who are they trying to throw the election to? Don't just alleged some sloppy vague conspiracy, because all that does is undermine people's belief in reality itself, never mind just the democratic system.

I'd ask them, play out your theory, who was it that they were trying to help? What are you alleging was going on? This is Democratic primary, it has nothing to do with Republicans, did it have something to do with trying to help one candidate? Well, which one, and, tell us who the culprits are. Don't just leave this thing hanging out there. If you look at it with any integrity and an open mind, I think you see that the Board of Elections explanation is probably the most plausible one. Which is that somebody screwed up, put some junk data in with real data and reported a blend that is by definition inaccurate and will have to be recalculated and we presented, which is what we're going to do today.

Brian Lehrer: Well, we'll wrap this up for now with this tweet from a listener who says, "I think this is an easy fix. If you see black olives, and green pepper ahead of Eric Adams or Kathryn Garcia, those are probably tests ballots." We will leave it there with Errol Louis host of inside city hall, which you can see tonight and every weekday night at 7:00 PM and 11:00 PM on Spectrum News, New York 1, he's also a Daily News columnist. Errol thanks so much for some time on a busy day.

Errol Louis: Thanks Brian.

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