The New York City Board of Elections disqualified 84,208 vote-by-mail ballots — 26% of the total cast — in the June 23 Democratic presidential primary, according to a report cited Wednesday evening by the New York Post.
The Post reported:
The city BOE received 403,213 mail-in ballots for the June 23 Democratic presidential primary.
But the certified results released Wednesday revealed that only 318,995 mail-in ballots were counted.
That’s means 84,208 ballots were not counted or invalidated — 26 percent of the total.
One out of four mail-in ballots were disqualified for arriving late, lacking a postmark or failing to include a voter’s signature, or other defects.
Votes are still being counted from the June 23 primary, where several close elections were only decided weeks later.
Earlier on Wednesday, Rep. Carolyn Maloney (D-NY) declared victory — more than six weeks later — over her primary challenger.
New York State encouraged voters to vote by mail rather than in person, citing the risk of coronavirus.
Nearly 2 million voters statewide requested mail-in ballots, and the system was overwhelmed, according to an earlier report by NBC-4 New York that described “a tidal wave of absentee ballots that overwhelmed a system which typically handles only around 5% of the vote,” and fears of “disenfranchisement.”
President Donald Trump reiterated his concerns Wednesday at a press briefing at the White House, where he said that states that did not have existing vote-by-mail systems ran the risk of irregularities that could delay the result of the presidential election from being known.
