Elections

Wednesday: Here’s what to know about the date of the special election that will allow voters to decide whether to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom.Supporters of removing California’s governor, Gavin Newsom, in Carlsbad last week.Mike Blake/ReutersGood morning.At first, political experts said that if it happened, a special election to recall Gov. Gavin Newsom from office would happen later in the year — probably November? There was a complex, lengthy process that would have to take place first, and the earlier estimates accounted for all of that.But now, here we are, with a date for the election that is much sooner than expected: Sept. 14. How? Why? What does it mean for Newsom and his opponents? Here’s what you need to know.Who set the election date for Sept. 14?The date was decided by Lt. Gov. Eleni Kounalakis, a Democrat who is closely allied with the governor. It was the soonest that county officials said they could pull together a special election.Previous estimates were later because the recall election process required an additional step, a cost review, before a date could be set. But last month, lawmakers passed a bill allowing the state to bypass that review and pick an earlier date.So, over objections that legislators were changing the rules of the game in order to protect the governor, that’s what they did.The special election is expected to cost taxpayers some $276 million, state officials said. That, of course, doesn’t include campaign expenditures. In total, David McCuan, a political science professor at Sonoma State University, told me he expected the spending to be somewhere around half a billion dollars.But McCuan said this was all part of what he described as “protest politics,” in which politicians are judged less by what they do and more by what sides of contentious issues they represent..css-1xzcza9{list-style-type:disc;padding-inline-start:1em;}.css-3btd0c{font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-size:1rem;line-height:1.375rem;color:#333;margin-bottom:0.78125rem;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-3btd0c{font-size:1.0625rem;line-height:1.5rem;margin-bottom:0.9375rem;}}.css-3btd0c strong{font-weight:600;}.css-3btd0c em{font-style:italic;}.css-w739ur{margin:0 auto 5px;font-family:nyt-franklin,helvetica,arial,sans-serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.125rem;line-height:1.3125rem;color:#121212;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-family:nyt-cheltenham,georgia,’times new roman’,times,serif;font-weight:700;font-size:1.375rem;line-height:1.625rem;}@media (min-width:740px){#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-w739ur{font-size:1.6875rem;line-height:1.875rem;}}@media (min-width:740px){.css-w739ur{font-size:1.25rem;line-height:1.4375rem;}}.css-9s9ecg{margin-bottom:15px;}.css-uf1ume{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-box-pack:justify;-webkit-justify-content:space-between;-ms-flex-pack:justify;justify-content:space-between;}.css-wxi1cx{display:-webkit-box;display:-webkit-flex;display:-ms-flexbox;display:flex;-webkit-flex-direction:column;-ms-flex-direction:column;flex-direction:column;-webkit-align-self:flex-end;-ms-flex-item-align:end;align-self:flex-end;}.css-12vbvwq{background-color:white;border:1px solid #e2e2e2;width:calc(100% – 40px);max-width:600px;margin:1.5rem auto 1.9rem;padding:15px;box-sizing:border-box;}@media (min-width:740px){.css-12vbvwq{padding:20px;width:100%;}}.css-12vbvwq:focus{outline:1px solid #e2e2e2;}#NYT_BELOW_MAIN_CONTENT_REGION .css-12vbvwq{border:none;padding:10px 0 0;border-top:2px solid #121212;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-rdoyk0{-webkit-transform:rotate(0deg);-ms-transform:rotate(0deg);transform:rotate(0deg);}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-eb027h{max-height:300px;overflow:hidden;-webkit-transition:none;transition:none;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-5gimkt:after{content:’See more’;}.css-12vbvwq[data-truncated] .css-6mllg9{opacity:1;}.css-qjk116{margin:0 auto;overflow:hidden;}.css-qjk116 strong{font-weight:700;}.css-qjk116 em{font-style:italic;}.css-qjk116 a{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-underline-offset:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-thickness:1px;text-decoration-thickness:1px;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:visited{color:#326891;-webkit-text-decoration-color:#326891;text-decoration-color:#326891;}.css-qjk116 a:hover{-webkit-text-decoration:none;text-decoration:none;}“It’s the weaponization of Trump’s playbook through direct democracy by both Republicans and Democrats,” he said.Is that date good or bad for Newsom?It’s clear that Newsom and his advisers believe the earlier date is good for him. It will allow the governor to take advantage of Californians’ optimism as they emerge from the pandemic, and will keep short the amount of time left for serious contenders to enter the race. (They have only about two more weeks to jump in. More than 50 candidates are already on the ballot, including a handful of well-funded Republicans.)And indeed, McCuan said, from a lawmaking standpoint, the Sept. 14 timing is advantageous for the governor.It’s near the end of the legislative session. This year, the state’s Democrats will have items on their wish lists from a huge budget surplus.“The Newsom team is going to want to parcel those out based upon who’s playing well in their sandbox,” he said. “He’ll have bills in front of him to sign or veto as he’s going into the recall.”Gov. Gavin Newsom spoke at an event where he outlined measures to help restaurants and bars reopen.Jim Wilson/The New York TimesIs that date good or bad for the governor’s opponents?Experts said it may not be bad for proponents of the recall — even if it’s good for Newsom.Joshua Spivak, a senior fellow at Wagner College’s Hugh L. Carey Institute for Government Reform, told me that the rush to get out the ballot could backfire.Right now, the voters who are most “engaged — and probably enraged,” are those who would like to boot the governor, as Spivak wrote in an opinion piece for The Los Angeles Daily News. Having a later election would give the Newsom campaign more time to raise money and convince the state’s Democratic base that it’s important to vote.A later election date also would give Newsom more time to respond to any unforeseen delays or complications with school reopenings in the fall; prolonged school closures were a major point of criticism for Newsom’s Republican opponents.Still, McCuan said, even if the recall effort fails — as it is expected to do — it will have been worth it for Republicans if they’re able to accomplish one thing: increase party registration in a state where Democrats have dominated and the G.O.P. has been divided over its future.Republicans can also use the recall as an opportunity to hone a message for California voters before the 2022 midterm elections.For more:Find all the answers to your questions about the recall here.Read more about the rule change lawmakers recently passed from The Sacramento Bee.Kevin Kiley, a state lawmaker who has been a chief opponent of the governor’s, pushing back repeatedly against pandemic restrictions, announced on Twitter that he would run against him in the recall.Here’s what else to know todayVisitors walked by the salt flats of Badwater Basin inside Death Valley National Park last month.Patrick T. Fallon/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesA heat wave is expected across the West this week. Here’s how things look in the Bay Area, the Central Valley and Southern California.Here’s the latest on the Delta variant in the state from The Los Angeles Times.The collapse of an apartment building in Surfside, Fla., is raising concerns about the structural integrity of San Francisco’s Millennium Tower, CNN reports.CapRadio investigates why FEMA rejected 95 percent of aid applications during last year’s disastrous wildfire season.State lawmakers delayed until next year a vote on a bill that would create supervised drug sites for opioid users, The Associated Press reports.CalMatters explored the two recent decrees, one from the Biden administration, and the other from the Supreme Court, that affect the management of the state’s water supply.A second round of $600 stimulus checks is part of the current budget negotiations. The San Francisco Chronicle explains how to know if you’ll get one.After a huge explosion of illegal fireworks last week in south Los Angeles, more than 20 families were evacuated from the area and have yet to return home, The Los Angeles Times reports.The Guardian explores how Black Wall Streets in California have weathered the pandemic and are changing the cities around them.CalMatters looks at how the state is spending $61 million to create highway crossings to keep wildlife and drivers safe.Los Angeles’s Tyler, the Creator notched his second No. 1 on the Billboard album chart this week with “Call Me if You Get Lost.”Real estate: What $3.3 million gets you in California.And finally …Growing up in India, Vijaya Srivastava, now 72, never had access to swimming pools.Aubrey Trinnaman for The New York TimesFor the first 68 years of her life, Vijaya Srivastava stayed on dry land. She hadn’t grown up with access to swimming pools, and as an adult she spent time volunteering or walking around the Berkeley Hills to stay fit.But, as she explains in this new interview series, she decided to learn to swim.If you need a little motivation today, take to heart Srivastava’s advice: “Don’t give yourself an option to give up.”California Today goes live at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time weekdays. Tell us what you want to see: [email protected]. Were you forwarded this email? Sign up for California Today here and read every edition online here.Jill Cowan grew up in Orange County, graduated from U.C. Berkeley and has reported all over the state, including the Bay Area, Bakersfield and Los Angeles — but she always wants to see more. Follow along here or on Twitter. More

[Want to get New York Today by email? Here’s the sign-up.]It’s Wednesday. Weather: A heat advisory is in effect until tonight. Mostly sunny, with a high in the mid-90s. Scattered storms this evening. Alternate-side parking: In effect until July 19 (Eid al-Adha). James Estrin/The New York TimesIt’s been two weeks of partial updates and countless caveats. But finally, we have a result.Eric Adams has won the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City, according to a call of the contest by The Associated Press on Tuesday. The former police captain edged out his closest rival, Kathryn Garcia, by a single percentage point after elections officials tallied absentee ballots and ran through the ranked-choice elimination rounds.He will be the overwhelming favorite in the November general election against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee, given New York’s political makeup. He would become the second Black mayor in the city’s history.[Read more about the results and Mr. Adams’s base of support.]Here’s what to know:The resultsAfter Primary Day, as in-person, first-choice votes were tallied, Mr. Adams led the crowded field, with a roughly 10-point margin over the second-place candidate. But as ranked-choice selections were tabulated, Ms. Garcia and Maya Wiley moved into a tight three-way heat.But after more than 100,000 absentee ballots were tallied, Ms. Garcia could not fully close the gap: She trailed by about 8,400 votes in an unofficial final-round matchup. Ms. Wiley finished in third place. The two were vying to become the city’s first female mayor.Of the nearly 938,000 ballots counted overall, about 15 percent ranked neither Mr. Adams or Ms. Garcia. If a greater portion of them had ranked either candidate, the outcome of the race might have changed.The reactionNeither Ms. Garcia nor Ms. Wiley has conceded, and their campaign statements noted that the results had not yet been made official. It was not immediately clear whether either would bring legal challenges against the results, given the small margin. (All three leading candidates had filed to maintain the option to do so.)If they do not, the results could be certified next week.The remaining ballotsThe tabulations on Tuesday included most but not all of the absentee ballots.There are potentially several thousand votes still to be counted, which may include affidavit votes, as well as defective absentee ballots that voters can fix within the next week. The Adams campaign told my colleague Dana Rubinstein that there are maybe 3,000 votes left to count, which would make it mathematically impossible for Ms. Garcia to win.From The TimesCuomo Declares a Gun Violence Emergency in New York StateAs Delta Risk Looms, New York City Scales Back Covid MonitoringMan Charged With Hate Crimes After Racist Tirade Is Caught on VideoNew York’s Fiscal Watchdog Sues to End Mayor’s Pandemic Spending PowersHot Vax Summer? Falstaff and Shakespeare in the Park Are Ready.Want more news? Check out our full coverage.The Mini Crossword: Here is today’s puzzle.What we’re readingThe city’s three public library systems will return to nearly full service this month, reopening at their prepandemic schedules. [Gothamist]More than 10,000 subway trips were canceled last month because of a shortage of train crew members, the most in a month since the earliest stages of the pandemic. [The City]A second Shake Shack employee has sued the Police Department over an incident last June in which officials made unfounded claims that fast-food workers intentionally poisoned officers [Daily News]And finally: Once again, life is a cabaretElysa Gardner writes:“Thank you all for risking your lives by coming out tonight,” Joe Iconis quipped, welcoming a socially distanced crowd to the June reopening of the cabaret venue Feinstein’s/54 Below in Manhattan.Iconis, a composer, lyricist and performer beloved among young musical theater fans, was joking, but before diving into an alternately goofy and poignant set with the actor and singer George Salazar, he added, earnestly, “It’s the most incredible thing to be able to do this show for real human beings, not computer screens.”Moist-eyed reunions between artists and fans have been taking place across the city as Covid-19 restrictions have gradually relaxed. Storied establishments like the jazz clubs Birdland and Blue Note, newer spots such as the Green Room 42 and City Winery at Hudson River Park (which both reopened in April) and the East Village alt-cabaret oases Pangea and Club Cumming are once again offering food, drink and in-the-flesh entertainment. And cabaret veterans — along with other jazz and pop acts, and drag performers — are returning to the work that is their bread and butter.“To see people physiologically responding to music again — toes tapping, heads bopping — that’s almost better than applause,” said the pianist and singer Michael Garin, one of many who used social media to stay connected with fans during the pandemic, and among the first to resume performances for live audiences.But, Garin noted, “It’s not like we’re flipping a switch and bringing everything back to normal.” Particularly in the spring, not everyone was ready to pick up where they left off.Still, it is the love of performing itself, and the perspective gained after a year of lost shows, that is driving many artists’ emotional responses to returning to the stage. Michael Feinstein, the multitasking American songbook champion and namesake for clubs in San Francisco and Los Angeles as well as New York, believes “that anyone who is a performer is coming out of this in a very different place, with a deeper sense of connection and joy and gratitude.”“I cannot imagine any artist now taking any moment of what we do for granted,” he added.It’s Wednesday — go see a show.Metropolitan Diary: No. 7 buzz Dear Diary:I was standing on a No. 7 train heading into Manhattan when a wasp started buzzing around my head and then landed in my hair.An older woman standing nearby noticed what was happening and the panicked expression on my face that said, “What do I do now?”Without a word, she calmly rolled up her newspaper and gently hit me on the head.The wasp, probably somewhat dazed, flew away.— Joan McGrathIllustrated by Agnes Lee. Read more Metropolitan Diary here.New York Today is published weekdays around 6 a.m. Sign up here to get it by email. You can also find it at nytoday.com. More

The Times political correspondent Katie Glueck discusses covering two intense races: the presidency and the New York City Democratic primary for mayor.Times Insider explains who we are and what we do, and delivers behind-the-scenes insights into how our journalism comes together.Katie Glueck, the chief Metro political correspondent for The New York Times, is used to juggling multiple deadlines in one day. That can simply be part of the job when you cover more than a dozen major candidates in New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor, which was called in favor of Eric L. Adams on Tuesday, according to The Associated Press.But Ms. Glueck is no stranger to elections. Before this race, she was the lead reporter covering Joseph R. Biden Jr.’s presidential campaign, an 18-month marathon. (She switched to her Metro assignment in January.) Ms. Glueck recently discussed how covering the mayoral race stacks up against covering a presidential election — and how she manages to stay on top of the news when she isn’t breaking it herself.How does covering a mayoral race compare with covering a presidential one?Covering a presidential campaign, in nonpandemic circumstances, involves far-flung travel. But New York is incredibly diverse, so with the mayoral campaign, I’m also reporting from all kinds of different places, even if the geographic area is smaller. Also, when you’re covering the mayor’s race, you often get more access to the candidates. As I recall, Mr. Biden was willing to help voters stay in touch with him and his team, and happily hopped on the phone with a given voter’s relative — but unlike the mayoral candidates, he was less likely to jump on his cellphone to chat with the reporters covering him, though we tried to talk with him every chance we got.Which race were people more passionate about?The presidential one, initially. Especially in the Democratic primary, when the focus was on who could defeat Donald Trump. With the mayor’s race, it understandably took some voters longer to engage with a race that began amid the throes of the pandemic — but those who did, often did so because they realized just how incredibly consequential the contest was for the future of the city. What challenges did the pandemic present for your reporting?The mayor’s race, for many months, was conducted largely over Zoom, which, at first, made it more difficult to understand what messages most resonated with the electorate. Luckily, the mayor’s race took on more of the feeling of a traditional race toward the end, when the candidates were out more consistently and we could see them engaging more frequently with voters.Why did you become a political reporter?I love covering American politics, whether it’s talking with voters about what motivates them, or capturing how political figures — often with larger-than-life personalities — are battling to win them over. It’s a real privilege to try to assess the mood of the country or the city, whether on a presidential or mayoral level. Both kinds of races have major implications for the daily lives of Americans, and we take the responsibility of trying to get the story right very seriously. On a lighter note, New York politics is raucous, unpredictable and so much fun. At the presidential level, you get to see different parts of the country and meet fascinating political characters — and consult with your colleagues on must-visit restaurants wherever you’ve landed.How do you keep up with all the news on the campaign trail?Of course, I read what my colleagues are writing, as well as what our competitors are up to, a little bit nervously. Watching NY1 is vital at the city level. And I spend some time on Twitter — I’m not even the most prolific tweeter, I’m just watching!You’ve published more than 600 articles over the past two years, according to The New York Times’s archives. Are you able to take days off?It’s a seven-days-a-week kind of job during campaign season, in both cases. During campaigns, the candidates want to be out talking to voters, and they often need to do that on Saturdays. You don’t get a lot of sleep — my coffee habit has been a serious addiction since I was a teenager, and it has only intensified in the years since. Once the primary is over, I’m hoping to escape for a quick vacation. After covering the presidential campaign, I have lots of Marriott points to use!Anywhere specific in mind?My husband and I took a couple of very cold road trips last year: We went to Maine in November, which was beautiful, if freezing, and to a very cold beach in December. I’m hoping after this primary I can go to a beach when it’s warm. More

Mr. Adams held off Kathryn Garcia after a count of 118,000 absentee ballots saw his substantial lead on primary night narrow to a single percentage point.Eric L. Adams, who rose from poverty to become an iconoclastic police captain and the borough president of Brooklyn, declared victory in the Democratic nomination for mayor of New York City on Tuesday, putting him on track to become the second Black mayor in the history of the nation’s largest city.The contest, which was called by The Associated Press on Tuesday night, was seen as one of the city’s most critical elections in a generation, with the winner expected to help set New York on a recovery course from the economic devastation of Covid-19 and from the longstanding racial and socioeconomic inequalities that the pandemic deepened.But as the campaign entered its final months, a spike in shootings and homicides drove public safety and crime to the forefront of voters’ minds, and Mr. Adams — the only leading candidate with a law enforcement background — moved urgently to demonstrate authority on the issue.Mr. Adams held an 8,400-vote lead over Kathryn Garcia, a margin of one percentage point — small enough that it was not immediately clear whether she or any of his opponents would contest the result in court. All three leading candidates had filed to maintain the option to challenge the results. If no one does so, Mr. Adams’s victory could be certified as soon as next week.“While there are still some very small amounts of votes to be counted, the results are clear: An historic, diverse, five-borough coalition led by working-class New Yorkers has led us to victory in the Democratic primary for mayor of New York City,” Mr. Adams, 60, said in a statement.Yet neither Ms. Garcia nor Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio who finished in third place, was ready to offer a concession on Tuesday, with each offering brief statements that vaguely alluded to their next steps.The results came after the city’s Board of Elections counted an additional 118,000 absentee ballots and then deployed a ranked-choice elimination system — the first time New York has used it in a mayoral election.Kathryn Garcia moved ahead to second place on the strength of ranked-choice balloting but could not surpass Mr. Adams.Desiree Rios for The New York TimesThere are potentially several thousand votes still to be counted, which may include affidavit votes and defective absentee ballots that voters can fix within the next week. Although the Board of Elections could not provide a precise number of those votes on Tuesday, the Adams campaign said there were not enough for Ms. Garcia to overtake him.Lindsey Green, a spokeswoman for Ms. Garcia, said in a statement that campaign officials were “currently seeking additional clarity on the number of outstanding ballots and are committed to supporting the Democratic nominee.”Under the ranked-choice voting system, voters could rank up to five candidates on their ballots in preferential order. Because Mr. Adams did not receive more than 50 percent of first-choice votes on the initial tally, the winner was decided by ranked-choice elimination.Thirteen Democratic candidates were whittled down one by one, with the candidate with the fewest first-place votes eliminated, and those votes were redistributed to the voters’ next-ranked choice. Ms. Wiley, who emerged late in the primary as a left-wing standard-bearer, was eliminated following the seventh round of tabulations.Ms. Garcia won far more of Ms. Wiley’s votes than Mr. Adams did, but not quite enough to close the gap.Still, it was a striking result for Ms. Garcia, a candidate who until recently was little known and who lacked the institutional support and the political operation that helped propel Mr. Adams, a veteran city politician.In heavily Democratic New York City, Mr. Adams will be the overwhelming favorite in the general election against Curtis Sliwa, the Republican nominee and the founder of the Guardian Angels.“Now we must focus on winning in November so that we can deliver on the promise of this great city for those who are struggling, who are underserved and who are committed to a safe, fair, affordable future for all New Yorkers,” Mr. Adams said in his statement.The final-round matchup between Mr. Adams and Ms. Garcia illustrated sharp divisions within the Democratic Party along the lines of race, class and education.Mr. Adams, who cast himself as a blue-collar candidate, led in every borough except Manhattan in the tally of first-choice votes and was the strong favorite among working-class Black and Latino voters. He also demonstrated strength with white voters who held more moderate views, especially, some data suggests, among those voters who did not have college degrees — a coalition that has been likened to the one that propelled President Biden to the Democratic nomination in 2020.Ms. Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner who ran on a message of technocratic competence, was popular with white moderate voters across the five boroughs.But she was overwhelmingly the candidate of Manhattan, dominating in some of the wealthiest ZIP codes in the country. She appealed to highly educated and more affluent voters across the ideological spectrum there and in parts of brownstone Brooklyn, even as she struggled to connect with voters of color elsewhere in the kinds of numbers it would have taken to win.The results capped a remarkable stretch in the city’s political history: The race began in a pandemic and took several unexpected twists in the final weeks, as one candidate confronted accusations of sexual misconduct dating back decades; another faced a campaign implosion; and Mr. Adams, under fire over residency questions, offered reporters a tour of the Brooklyn apartment where he says he lives.Most recently, it was colored by a vote-tallying disaster at the Board of Elections, leaving simmering concerns among Democrats about whether the eventual outcome would leave voters divided and mistrustful of the city’s electoral process. In a statement Tuesday night, Ms. Wiley thanked her supporters and expressed grave concerns about the Board of Elections.“We will have more to say about the next steps shortly,” the statement said. “Today we simply must recommit ourselves to a reformed Board of Elections and build new confidence in how we administer voting in New York City. New York City’s voters deserve better, and the B.O.E. must be completely remade following what can only be described as a debacle.”Ms. Garcia came in third place among voters who cast ballots in person on Primary Day and during the early voting period, trailing both Mr. Adams and Ms. Wiley. But on the strength of ranked-choice voting, she surged into second place, with significant support from voters who had ranked Ms. Wiley and Andrew Yang, a former presidential candidate, as their top choices.Ms. Garcia and Mr. Yang spent time during the final days of the race campaigning together and appearing on joint campaign literature, a team-up that plainly benefited Ms. Garcia under the ranked-choice process after Mr. Yang, who began the race as a front-runner but plummeted to fourth place on Primary Day, dropped out.Maya Wiley, who had the second highest number of first-place votes, lost ground during the ranked-choice process.Hilary Swift for The New York TimesMs. Wiley, a favorite of younger left-wing voters, had sought to build a broad multiracial coalition, and she earned the support of some of New York’s most prominent Democratic members of Congress. Mr. Adams and Ms. Garcia both ran as relative moderates on policy issues, including policing, education and their postures toward the business and real estate communities.The apparent victory of Mr. Adams, who embraces a relatively expansive role for law enforcement in promoting public safety, amounts to a rebuke of the left wing of his party that promoted far-reaching efforts to scale back the power of the police. The race was a vital if imperfect test of Democratic attitudes around crime amid a national wave of gun violence in American cities.Mr. Adams pushed for urgent action to combat a rise in gun violence and troubling incidents of subway crimes as well as bias attacks, especially against Asian Americans and Jews. While crime rates are nowhere near those of more violent earlier eras, policing still became the most divisive subject in the mayoral race.But some older voters had first heard about Mr. Adams when he was a younger member of the police force, pushing to rein in police misconduct.That background helped him emerge as a candidate with perceived credibility on issues of both combating crime and curbing police violence. And some Democrats, aware that national Republicans are eager to caricature their party as insufficiently concerned about crime, have taken note of Mr. Adams’s messaging — even if his career and life story are, in practice, difficult for other candidates to automatically replicate.“What Eric Adams has said quite well is that we need to listen to communities that are concerned about public safety, even as we fight for critical reforms in policing and racial justice more broadly in our society,” said Representative Sean Patrick Maloney, a New York Democrat and the chairman of the Democratic House campaign arm, who endorsed Mr. Adams the day before the primary.While Mr. Adams was named the winner on Tuesday night, he faces significant challenges in unifying the city around his candidacy. He has faced scrutiny over transparency issues concerning his tax and real estate disclosures; his fund-raising practices and even questions of residency, issues that may intensify under the glare of the nominee’s spotlight, and certainly as mayor, should he win as expected in November.Michael Gold More

Republicans have seized on the botched release of results from the mayor’s race — but the overall effect on public trust goes deeper.It has been one week since the New York City Board of Elections botched the release of preliminary ranked-choice tabulations from the city’s mayoral race, counting 135,000 dummy ballots that employees had used to test a computer system and then failed to delete.It was a stunning display of carelessness even from an agency long known for its dysfunction, and the reverberations will continue long after Tuesday evening, when Eric Adams was declared the winner of the Democratic primary race by The Associated Press. (You can follow the latest news here.) That’s because, while the mistake was discovered within hours and corrected by the next day, it provided purveyors of right-wing disinformation with ammunition as powerful as anything they could have invented.Some supporters of former President Donald J. Trump quickly suggested that the results of the 2020 election might also have been miscounted. (Exhaustive investigations have made it very clear that they weren’t.) Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, called ranked-choice voting “a corrupt scam” — even though problems at the Board of Elections far predate it — and tweeted: “How can anyone trust that a voter’s fourth-place choice was accurately tabulated on the eighth round of ranking? Look at the debacle in New York City right now.” Mr. Trump himself suggested falsely that the true results would never be known.“We had an election where we did much better than we did the first time, and amazingly, we lost,” Mr. Trump said at an event in Texas on Wednesday. “Check out the New York election today, by the way. They just realized it’s a disaster. They’re unable to count the votes. Did you see it? It just came out. They’re missing 135,000 votes. They put 135,000 make-believe votes in. Our elections are a disaster.”The disinformation fueled by New York’s mistake may not end up being compelling to Americans who haven’t already bought into the lie that the 2020 election was stolen. But it is very likely, especially among New Yorkers, to undermine overall trust in public institutions — and that sort of distrust creates fertile ground for disinformation to grow.“The average New York City Democrat probably doesn’t look to Donald Trump or Tom Cotton as a validator, but it does fit into that general narrative that’s been pushed into the ether for months,” said Melissa Ryan, the chief executive of CARD Strategies, a consulting firm that helps organizations combat disinformation and online extremism. “Trust in institutions is at an all-time low, and whenever something like this happens, folks who aren’t necessarily right-wing hard-liners or believers in conspiracies generally — it’s going to erode their trust with another institution.”That’s significant, Ms. Ryan said, given that “people are susceptible to disinformation in part because they don’t trust institutions already, so they’re more inclined to believe the worst possible version.”There is some irony to the possibility that the Board of Elections’ error will undermine trust in election results, because it in fact revealed how quickly an actual miscount becomes apparent.The error should never have happened, but once it did, it “was detected less than hours after it was displayed,” said David J. Becker, the executive director of the Center for Election Innovation & Research. “And yet we are now eight months past the November election, and the losing presidential candidate still can’t present any evidence of any systematic fraud anywhere in the country. They’ve had eight months, and the New York City problem was detected in probably eight minutes.”More to the point, because there is a paper trail, “we will get the right winner, just like we got the right winner in 2020,” Mr. Becker said. “If we can look at the facts of what happened and say, ‘Here’s where the structure failed, here’s where personnel failed, here’s where the process failed,’ and try to reform that, that would be a very, very positive outcome. But even with those mistakes, we’re going to get the correct answer.”On Politics is also available as a newsletter. Sign up here to get it delivered to your inbox.Is there anything you think we’re missing? Anything you want to see more of? We’d love to hear from you. Email us at [email protected]. More

With one of the most competitive mayor’s races in recent memory and a number of hotly contested down-ballot primaries, the turnout in last month’s Democratic mayoral primary in New York City was the strongest in years.So far, the Board of Elections has counted the ballots of about 820,000 registered Democrats who voted in-person in the mayoral primary. As of Friday, an additional 125,794 Democratic absentee ballots had been returned, likely bringing the turnout to at least 945,000 voters.That means that roughly 26 percent of the city’s 3.7 million registered Democrats voted in the mayoral primary this year — which is higher than, say, the 22 percent that voted in 2013, the last time there was a wide-open mayoral race. Bill de Blasio ended up prevailing. However, the turnout was low by historical standards; a number of bitterly fought races in the 1970s and 1980s drew more voters.The Democrats’ choice will be the overwhelming favorite in the general election against Curtis Sliwa, who won the Republican primary with even lower turnout. The elections board has tallied about 55,000 in-person votes from Republicans, and another 5,800 absentee ballots have been returned. That total of 60,800 ballots accounts for about 10 percent of the city’s registered Republicans. More

The new results should include most of the roughly 125,000 Democratic absentee ballots, which were not included in last week’s count.New York City’s Board of Elections will release a new tally of votes in the Democratic primary for mayor on Tuesday. Let’s hope it goes better than it did last week, when officials announced inaccurate figures and had to retract them.The updated tally on Tuesday should include most of the roughly 125,000 Democratic absentee ballots, which were not included in the first count. It should give us a better sense of who is likely to win the race, though final results are not expected until next week.In the corrected preliminary tally released after the retraction last week, Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, was leading his closest rival, Kathryn Garcia, the city’s former sanitation commissioner, by just 14,755 votes, a margin of around 2 percentage points. Mr. Adams needs to hold on to his lead, while Ms. Garcia is hoping to overtake him by winning more absentee votes in Manhattan and by appearing on more ballots as voters’ second or third choice. Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mayor Bill de Blasio, was in third place and believes she still has a chance to win.If Mr. Adams does win the primary — and the general election in November — he would be the city’s second Black mayor after David N. Dinkins, who was elected in 1989. Ms. Wiley is also Black; she and Ms. Garcia are both seeking to become the first woman to be elected mayor of New York.The city’s new ranked-choice voting system allowed voters to rank up to five candidates in order of preference. Since no one won more than 50 percent of first-choice votes for mayor, the winner will be decided by a process of elimination: Lower-polling candidates are dropped out in rounds, with the votes initially counted for them distributed to whichever candidate their voters ranked next.Officials did not say when to expect the results on Tuesday, but the Board of Elections announced in a cryptic post on Twitter in the morning that the new results should arrive during “brunch special” hours instead of “club hours” late at night. That prompted a playful debate on social media over when exactly it is appropriate to eat brunch in New York City. But the clock ticked into the later afternoon hours without results, bringing early dinner within view. More

The Supreme Court’s decision on voting rights suggests that limits to the convenience of voting methods may be relatively permissible, while new burdens on casting a ballot in-person might be more vulnerable.What kind of restrictions on voting violate Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act? That’s the basic question in the wake of the Supreme Court’s decision to uphold two Arizona voting provisions last week.The court’s decision didn’t offer a clear answer. Instead, it offered “guideposts” to illustrate why the Arizona law passed muster, without clearly indicating when a law might go too far. Those guideposts appear to set a high bar for successful voting rights litigation.But the guideposts offer lessons about what kinds of voting restrictions might be more or less vulnerable to legal challenge.Many of those lessons stem from a central concept underlying the decision: the idea that every voting system imposes certain “usual” burdens on voters, like traveling to a polling station or returning your ballot.Justice Samuel Alito, writing for the majority, made the case that these burdens may inevitably result in “some” racial disparity. As a result, the conservative justices reject the idea that racial disparity alone is sufficient to establish that a state denied everyone an equal opportunity to vote. That leaves the court looking for signs of a particularly unusual and distinctive burden, even though this added hurdle doesn’t exist in the text of the Voting Rights Act.The court found, without too much trouble, that the two Arizona laws weren’t particularly unusual or burdensome. That was not surprising. Even the Biden Justice Department said the laws did not violate the Voting Rights Act. But the way the court reached that conclusion nonetheless said a lot about what kinds of laws might survive judicial scrutiny.The court’s reasoning suggests that restrictions on the convenience of voting methods may be relatively permissible, while new burdens on in-person voting, whether a reduction in precincts or new voter identification requirements, might be more vulnerable. It may even mean that states with relatively lenient voting laws might have more leeway to impose new restrictions. And no matter what, a fairly large racial disparity — backed by strong statistical evidence — may be crucial in future cases.Convenience voting is less protectedSo what’s a usual burden, anyway? Oddly enough, the clearest benchmark offered by the court is whether a rule imposes a burden that was typical in 1982, when the Voting Rights Act was last amended.If the burden on voters was typical at the time, the thinking goes, then Congress probably didn’t intend to undermine those provisions.What kind of burden would that be? The court went out of its way to note that there was virtually no early or no-excuse mail absentee voting at the time. That can lead one to infer that the court may be fairly likely to accept restrictions on mail and early voting. From this point of view, convenience voting is a bonus option for voters, and any restriction would still leave voters less burdened than they were 40 years ago.The court refrained from deciding “whether adherence to, or a return to, a 1982 framework is necessarily lawful.” Perhaps it would not be, since nonwhite voters now disproportionately use methods intended to make voting more convenient, like early voting. And many states have scaled back their traditional Election Day voting options as demand has declined; simply eliminating convenience voting would often leave many voters with fewer options than they had 40 years ago. On the other hand, there’s not much evidence that expanded voting options have narrowed racial disparities in turnout.Wherever the court draws the line, it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that new ways to make voting more convenient will not be vigorously protected by the court.Novel restrictions may be unprotectedAt the same time, the court may look askance at novel regulations that impose burdens beyond what existed in 1982. Strict photo identification requirements, for instance, did not exist back then. And there was a certain level of basic access, in terms of the availability of in-person precincts, registration and voting hours, which the court would presumably be likely to protect.In oral arguments, Justice Elena Kagan asked whether it would be legal for a state to put all of its polling places in country clubs, where Black voters would need to travel farther than whites and would fear discrimination and experience a high level of discomfort. A 1982 standard, whatever its merits, would offer some level of protections against that kind of extreme possibility, even as it may allow rollbacks in mail and early voting.Size mattersWith the court resigned to some inevitable racial disparities in voting, successful voting rights litigation may entail finding a fairly large racial disparity.How large? Well, probably larger or clearer than in the Arizona case.The court believed that the requirement to vote in your own precinct would affect 1 percent of nonwhite in-person voters and .5 percent of non-Hispanic white in-person voters, or a disparity of about .5 percentage points. Even these figures overstate the share of voters who would be affected by the provision, as the majority of Arizonans cast ballots by mail, not in-person.Strong statistical evidence is also clearly important. The plaintiffs did not have any statistics to establish whether banning third-party ballot collection would create a large racial disparity in voting, and the court brushed aside the testimonial evidence that it was used more by non-white and especially Native American voters.If there’s any consolation for voting rights activists, it’s that many of the most prominent “voter suppression” laws usually feature clear statistical evidence showing that it imposes a burden on a larger share of eligible voters than Arizona’s requirement that voters cast ballots in their own precinct. But what the statistical threshold is for striking down a restrictive law based on racial disparity — 2 points, 5 points, 10 points? — remains to be seen.Court rules that fraud is a legitimate state interestNot even evidence of an unusual burden or a strong racial disparity would necessarily ensure the demise of a voting restriction, under the new ruling. The court also says it will weigh the strength of the state’s interest in regulating its elections against whatever burden it imposes.Judge Alito stated unequivocally in his opinion that preventing fraud was a “strong and entirely legitimate” state interest. A restriction that can be construed as a “reasonable means” for pursuing a legitimate state interest, like preventing fraud or ensuring that votes are cast free from intimidation, will be easier for the state to justify.Other restrictions, like eliminating automatic voter registration or Sunday early voting, do not have a clear connection to a strong state interest, like reducing fraud, and could be more likely to violate the Voting Rights Act.The case said relatively little new about establishing discriminatory intent, the focus of the Justice Department’s case in Georgia. The court reiterated its view that restrictions intended to advantage a specific political party are acceptable, though that distinction may be harder to sustain in Georgia, where Black voters make up an outright majority of Democrats. And the court rejected the theory that an otherwise legitimate and non-discriminatory legislative effort can be contaminated by racially tinged outside context. But that is not the allegation in Georgia, where the Justice Department asserts that the legislative process itself was flawed.The totality of the electoral systemPerhaps the most analytically significant twist in the court’s analysis is that it believes a state’s entire system of voting must be considered when evaluating the burden imposed by a provision.In a certain sense, it’s obvious that a state’s voting system affects whether a particular restriction imposes a great burden on voters. If Texas passed a law to require only a single in-person voting center per county, it might be tantamount to an end to free and fair elections in the state. But that’s the standard in Washington State, where nearly all votes are cast by mail.The court takes this proposition pretty far in the Arizona case. It implies that the availability of multiple, relatively easy options allows for restrictions on any particular option. It says, for instance, that the availability of no-excuse absentee voting — as opposed to universal vote by mail in Washington State — makes it easier to accept restrictions on in-person Election Day voting, even though many voters do not use mail voting and the opportunity to apply for a mail ballot has passed by the time Election Day rolls around.As a result, states offering more voting opportunities will probably find it easier to defend new voting restrictions. That’s probably good news for a state like Georgia, which has no-excuse absentee, early and Election Day voting. More