Elections

Turnout appeared low on Friday, with many voters saying they would not cast ballots in an election that they feel has been manipulated in favor of a hard-line conservative candidate.TEHRAN — The line outside the Tehran polling station was short and sedate on Friday morning, nothing like the energized down-the-block crowd that usually turns out for presidential elections in Iran.But when Abdolnaser Hemmati, the moderate in the race, showed up to vote, the sidewalk outside the polling station, set up at the Hosseinieh Ershad religious institute, suddenly crackled to life.“Your views are useless for this country,” one heckler shouted at Mr. Hemmati, the former governor of Iran’s central bank, holding up his phone to immortalize the moment.“You’re the hope of our nation,” a woman yelled to the candidate, trying to drown out the heckler.Iran’s presidential race has been marked, more than anything else, by a lack of interest: Many voters said they would not bother to cast ballots in an election that they feel has been manipulated in favor of the hard-line conservative candidate, Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s judiciary chief, who is close to the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s judiciary chief and a presidential candidate, greeted the news media after voting in Tehran on Friday. Many voters expect him to win.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesEven if they had more choice in the matter, previous elections all ended the same way no matter the winner, many Tehran residents said — with prices and rents shooting up, employment falling and pessimism taking hold.The lines of voters at several polling sites across the capital on Friday were much shorter than in previous presidential election years, though the ongoing coronavirus pandemic also likely affected turnout. The Iranian news media reported that as of 5 p.m. voter participation was at 23 percent. Results are expected on Saturday.Beneath that listless surface, however, is a country churning with rage and hope, bitterness and faith.Some of those who leaned liberal could not quite bear to shut themselves out of the vote, even as their friends or relatives boycotted it to protest the system.“We didn’t vote because of Hemmati himself,” said Milad, 34, a bank employee who came to the Hosseinieh Ershad polling station to vote for Mr. Hemmati. Many voters refused to give full names out of fear of speaking openly about politics. “We voted because we wanted to show the other side that there is still a voice of opposition in Iran. A weak voice of opposition is better than no voice at all.”Voters on each side agreed, broadly speaking, on the biggest issues facing the country: corruption, economic mismanagement and the U.S. sanctions that are intensifying Iran’s economic misery.But if the moderate opposition was divided over whether to vote, the conservatives who showed up to cast ballots were united behind Mr. Raisi and, more important, the Islamic government his candidacy had come to stand for. (Mr. Raisi’s campaign posters often feature him alongside Ayatollah Khamenei and Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the Iranian commander whose death in a U.S. airstrike last year brought crowds of mourners onto the streets.)Supporters of Mr. Raisi held a rally in Tehran on Wednesday.Arash Khamooshi for The New York Times“Despite all the shortages and shortcomings, we love our nation, and we will defend it to the last drop of blood,” said Marziyeh Gorji, 34, who works in a government office and said she had voted for Mr. Raisi because of his ties to revolutionary figures and his experience. “The people are upset, I understand that. But not voting is not the solution.”She motioned to her 5-year-old twin sons, who wore buttons featuring General Suleimani’s face. “I will raise them to be like General Suleimani,” she said.At Lorzadeh mosque in south Tehran, a poor and religiously conservative neighborhood, Muhammad Ehsani, 61, a retired government employee, said his ballot was an expression of faith in the ideals of the Islamic revolution that brought Iran’s current leadership to power.Being a citizen was like riding a bus, he said. If things were not going well — as every voter agreed they were not — the problem was with the driver, not with the bus.“What should we do?” he said. “It’s not logical to sit at home and not get on. It’s logical to get another company, another driver.”Draped across the entrance of the mosque was a banner with a picture of General Suleimani next to the words, “The Islamic Republic is considered a shrine. Those who are voting are defending the shrine.”The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, arriving to cast a ballot on Friday in Tehran.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesThe morning’s voting was marred by widespread reports of electronic voting systems malfunctioning and going offline from polling stations across Iran, according to Tasnim news agency, which is affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards. As polls opened Friday morning, voters showed up to hear that they could not vote, and multiple polling stations had to delay their opening by more than an hour, Tasnim reported.“This is an epidemic of ballot boxes malfunctioning now,” said Kian Abdollahi, Tasnim’s editor in chief, during a live election report on Clubhouse, the audio-only social media app. “This is unacceptable given concerns about low election turnout.”Tehran’s governor confirmed that there were technical problems with electronic voting systems at 79 polling stations across the capital.It was not immediately clear what had caused the problems.Outside the Hosseinieh Ershad polling station, Shabna, 40, a government employee who works in information technology and also gave just one name, was alternately throwing her fist in the air as she chanted “I support Hemmati” and tugging her colorful head scarf, which was slipping amid all the excitement, back into place.“We want to stop this engineered election,” she said, explaining that she believed Mr. Hemmati, as an economist, was best qualified to turn the economy around. A minute later, she was locked in an argument with a Hemmati critic.The lines of voters at several polling sites across the capital on Friday were much shorter than in previous presidential elections, though the pandemic also likely affected turnout.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesBut most voters interviewed on Friday did not seem to have such strong views about any particular candidate. They were there to vote because they always had, or because they believed in the system.Efat Rahmati, 54, a nurse, said it was strange that the Iranian authorities had excluded so many candidates from the race, a fact that many Iranians said had paved the way for Mr. Raisi to win. But she had still decided to vote, partly out of a personal liking for Mr. Raisi, and partly because the authorities “have more knowledge than me about this issue,” she said. “I think Raisi was better than the rest anyway.”Farnaz Fassihi contributed reporting from New York. More

In a soft pleading voice, the white-haired woman in the video implores, “For the sake of my son, Pouya Bakhtiari, don’t vote.” She holds the young man’s photo, and continues, “Because of the bullet they shot at his head and shattered his dreams, don’t vote.” In a second video, another mother, sitting next to a gravestone, echoed the same message: “At 30, my son lies under a huge pile of dirt.” A third woman described her 18-year-old son as full of hope, until Nov. 17, 2019, when a bullet pierced his heart.“Voting means betrayal,” she added.Videos like these, circulating on Iranian activists’ social media accounts with the hashtag that in Persian means #notovoting, have been appearing in increasing numbers in the weeks and months leading up to Iran’s presidential election on Friday. Some of the videos have been made by parents who say their children were shot dead during antigovernment protests over the last few years. Others are by the parents of political prisoners who were executed by the regime in the 1980s, as well as by the families of those who died in the Ukrainian passenger plane that crashed last year shortly after takeoff from Tehran. (Iran’s military said it mistakenly shot down the plane).What’s remarkable about the videos is their audacity: that Iranians are speaking up, seemingly without fear, about boycotting an election in an authoritarian country whose leaders rarely tolerate open displays of dissent. Iranians have had enough. And besides, what’s the point of voting when the result is predetermined?The call for an election boycott seems to be resonating: a recent poll by the state-run Iranian Student Polling Agency predicts that turnout will be as low as 40 percent — the lowest since the 1979 revolution.A low turnout in Friday’s election would certainly signal a rejection of the Islamic regime. But not voting will also give the regime exactly what it wants: a near-certain assurance that its handpicked candidate, Ebrahim Raisi, a cleric who is close to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, will win.Of course, the regime has done its part as well for Mr. Raisi. Last month, the Guardian Council, the body that vets election candidates, rejected all the potential candidates except for Mr. Raisi and six relatively unknown figures.Even insiders to the regime were reportedly stunned that the council had gone so far as to bar a current vice president, Eshaq Jahangiri, and a former speaker of Parliament, Ali Larijani.To be sure, the Guardian Council has rejected other presidential hopefuls over the past four decades. But this time it’s especially significant because the supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, is 82, which raises the issue of succession. Hard-liners within the Revolutionary Guards are grooming Mr. Raisi to take his place, making his election into office even more important. The ayatollah’s support for Mr. Raisi is no secret. After Mr. Raisi failed a bid for the presidency in 2017, Ayatollah Khamenei made him head of the judiciary two years later.The tightly controlled process has led many Iranians to question the entire exercise. And institutions such as the Guardian Council, which is controlled by Ayatollah Khamenei, have stymied any democratic change and crippled the efforts of presidents who have tried to introduce political and social freedoms. (Two presidential candidates during the 2009 race, Mehdi Karroubi and the former Prime Minister Mir Hossein Mousavi, who campaigned on a platform of delivering democratic reforms, remain under house arrest. The regime at the time suppressed massive protests in the aftermath of what was seen as a widely disputed election.)The campaign to boycott the election highlights the rising levels of both anger and apathy toward the regime, at a time when the economy has been suffering under the weight of U.S. sanctions, as well as mismanagement and corruption by Iranian officials. The government also badly botched the Covid-19 pandemic, leaving more than 82,000dead so far. In addition, the regime has brutally cracked down on protests that have erupted since 2009, mostly over worsening economic conditions.Those boycotting the vote include a wide group of people inside and outside Iran, including many who formerly used to be sympathetic to the regime, such as the former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Mr. Mousavi and Faezeh Hashemi, the daughter of former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Last month, over 230 prominent activists signed an open letter calling for an election boycott and stated that their goal is to bring “nonviolent transition from the Islamic Republic to the rule of the people.”Unsurprisingly, Ayatollah Khamenei has branded those pushing for a boycott as enemies and has urged Iranians to go to the polls. Here lies the regime’s dilemma: Iran’s leadership wants just enough turnout to legitimize Mr. Raisi’s victory, but not so much that the result might demonstrate how unpopular he really is.During his campaign trips in recent weeks, Mr. Raisi has sought to cast himself as a man of the people and has promised to fight corruption. He talked to people who approached him about pending court cases, depicting himself as an accessible man. But his past as head of the judiciary is testament to what may lie ahead under his rule. Young activists were tried behind closed doors and executed. As a young cleric, he signed off on the executions of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.Boycotting the elections, for a population that is deeply scarred, is understandable. But sadly, a boycott this time may cement the hard-liners’ grip on power for many years to come.Nazila Fathi is the author of “The Lonely War: One Woman’s Account of the Struggle for Modern Iran.” She is a fellow at the Washington-based Middle East Institute. She lives in Maryland.The Times is committed to publishing a diversity of letters to the editor. We’d like to hear what you think about this or any of our articles. Here are some tips. And here’s our email: [email protected] The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook, Twitter (@NYTopinion) and Instagram. More

New York City has embarked on the biggest ranked-choice voting election in American history with the Democratic primary for mayor on Tuesday. Plenty of New Yorkers are looking for advice on how to fill out their ballots to help their favorite candidates — or to try to block other candidates they don’t want in City Hall.As a longtime planner and champion of ranked-choice voting, I’ve pulled together some guidance for marking your ballot for a variety of scenarios involving the mayoral candidates, in particular Eric Adams, Maya Wiley, Kathryn Garcia, Andrew Yang and Scott Stringer. But first, the good news for voters: This is not rocket science.The system is designed for voters to express themselves and arrive at a consensus candidate. Because voting to get the results you want is so intuitive, ranked choice has become the nation’s most popular new electoral reform after successful uses in elections in Maine for president and Congress, mayoral elections in more than a dozen cities and elections for leaders of many major associations.Among the upsides: In Tuesday’s primaries, races up and down the ballot have multiple candidates of color and women, and in ranked-choice voting, none of them have to worry about split votes. That term describes what often happens when two or more candidates appealing to the same voters run in an election and the votes are divided, causing neither to win. This helps to explain why RepresentWomen and FairVote show sharply rising success for underrepresented candidates.The best advice is simple: Rank your favorite candidate first, your second favorite second and so on until you reach New York’s maximum of five ranked candidates. If you rank five, you’ll have cast your most expressive ballot ever.But for voters who want to think strategically, here are a few scenarios to keep in mind.‘I want Adams to win and Wiley to lose.’ More

In the Democratic primary’s last days, and with New York’s economy starting to regain its footing, a chronic problem gains new urgency.Random slashings on the subways. Groups of men clustered outside Midtown Manhattan hotels serving as homeless shelters. Anti-Asian attacks on the streets.In the closing days of New York’s Democratic primary for mayor, the city’s chronic struggle with homelessness has taken on increasing urgency. As the city moves to reopen for business and tourism, public concern — and the candidates’ attention — has focused on a small number of people who are mentally ill and potentially violent.The issue is complicated. Homeless people are not involved in every unsettling incident, and they also have been targeted in vicious killings and other attacks. Their advocates warn against demonizing a large group of people who are struggling just to survive. Most of the 48,000 people in the main shelter system are families with children, not single men.Before the pandemic hit, the shelter population had increased since Mayor Bill de Blasio took office, even as he doubled spending on homeless services to more than $3 billion. The number of families in shelters has dropped sharply since early last year, largely because of an eviction moratorium that has been extended through August. If it expires then, hundreds of thousands of tenants who collectively owe over $1 billion in back rent could lose their homes.Now, a spate of attacks on the streets and in the subway, combined with an increase in gun violence, have fed a perception in many quarters that the city is in danger of sliding into chaos. The candidates seem to be split, seeing the issue through two different lenses: the plight of people with an illness that can last their whole lives, and the safety and quality of life of everyone else.At the final debate on Wednesday, Andrew Yang, the former presidential candidate, left no doubt where he stood.“Yes, mentally ill people have rights,” the Democratic candidate Andrew Yang said at a mayoral debate this week. “But you know who else have rights? We do.” Andrew Seng for The New York Times“Mentally ill homeless men are changing the character of our neighborhoods,” Mr. Yang said. “We need to get them off of our streets and subways and into a better environment.” Later, he added: “Yes, mentally ill people have rights. But you know who else have rights? We do: the people and families of the city. We have the right to walk the street and not fear for our safety.”Candidates with more progressive agendas took a softer stance. Scott M. Stringer, the city comptroller, described his plan to build 30,000 units of so-called supportive housing, where people with mental illness would get a range of services. Maya Wiley, a former counsel to Mr. de Blasio, lamented that the Rikers Island jail complex had effectively become the city’s biggest psychiatric facility.Unlike some of Democratic rivals, Maya Wiley does not favor assigning more police officers to the subway system.Jonah Markowitz for The New York TimesThe causes of the apparent increase in the number of homeless people on the streets and in the subway of pandemic-era New York are many.When the lockdown hit last year, the city moved thousands of people from barrackslike group shelters across the city into unused hotels — many of them in densely populated middle-class and wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods — to stop the spread of Covid-19. Many people living under precarious conditions lost their jobs and, thus, their homes. With workers doing their jobs remotely, far fewer people were in the main business districts, leaving those who live on the streets to stand out. Some hospitals used inpatient psychiatric beds for Covid patients. Many libraries and other places where homeless people typically spend their days closed.The city is accelerating its efforts to move homeless people off the Manhattan streets. On Wednesday, Mr. de Blasio said that 8,000 people would be moved from 60 hotels back to group, or congregate, shelters by the end of July. Starting next week, the police will begin sweeps along 125th Street in Harlem to clear it of homeless people and those using drugs, according to a senior city official who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the plan has not been publicly announced. A spokeswoman for the mayor said the effort was focused on “helping people with substance abuse issues access harm-reduction resources” and that offer would be on hand to “assist as needed.”The leading Democratic candidates have proposed many plans to address the homelessness problem. Here are some of them. More details can be found in voter guides produced by RxHome and the Family Homelessness Coalition and City Limits.Reduce or end reliance on congregate shelters.Kathryn Garcia, a former sanitation commissioner who calls shelters “a band-aid solution to a long-term problem,” says she would cut the shelter population in half. Shaun Donovan, a former city housing commissioner under Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, said he would end the use of congregate shelters entirely in his first term. (Mr. Donovan’s tenure was the only time during Mr. Bloomberg administration that homelessness fell). Ms. Wiley cites “real concern” that people who stayed in hotels during the pandemic “will be unwilling to come to shelter if we shift back to congregate settings.”Build more “deeply affordable” housing — a lot more.All of the candidates say they will do this. Mr. Stringer says that Mr. de Blasio, despite highlighting his record on creating affordable housing, “has built more housing for people who make over $150,000 a year than for people who make $40,000 or $30,000.” He says he would require most new residential buildings financed with city subsidies to house people with very low incomes.Expand the use of shelters that offer more privacy and have fewer rules.So-called safe haven and stabilization shelters offer single-occupancy rooms and fewer rules and restrictions as to who qualifies for them than group shelters do. Many of the candidates want to build more of such shelters, including Raymond J. McGuire, a former Wall Street executive, and Mr. Yang, who said, “It’s a sign of the city’s broken politics when the choice is either temporary hotels or overcrowded shelters.”.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;}Get more people into psychiatric treatment.Mr. McGuire, Mr. Yang and Ms. Garcia all say they would press for wider use of Kendra’s Law, which allows courts to require treatment for people with mentally illness.Add psychiatric beds.Mr. Yang said that the number of psychiatric beds in city hospitals had decreased 14 percent and that he would double the current number, although he did not say how he would pay for it. Eric Adams, the Brooklyn borough president, and Mr. Yang both favor adding psychiatric “respite beds” for people with mental illness who are not deemed sick enough to be admitted to a hospital but are too sick to return to a shelter or to the streets.Focus more on providing mental health services to people in the streets and less on arresting people.“We cannot continue criminalizing being Black and brown, criminalizing mental illness, criminalizing having substance abuse issues,” Dianne Morales, a former nonprofit executive, said at the debate. “That is not the answer for creating a safe city.” Ms. Garcia supports sending “crisis teams” into the subway that include mental-health professionals “who will make a determination and get people the treatment that they need.” Ms. Wiley says Mr. de Blasio’s approach, which she called overpolicing, “never tried to solve homelessness and merely led to displacement, for example, moving those experiencing homelessness from the subways to the streets.”Close the prison-to-shelter pipeline.Mr. Donovan notes that more than half of the people released from state prisons to New York City go directly to homeless shelters, a cycle he pledged to break by providing housing vouchers to people leaving jail.Increase pressure on shelter operators to find permanent housing for clients.Mr. McGuire says he would shorten shelter stays by holding operators responsible for moving people into permanent housing and by “shifting contracts and investment to the most successful operators.”Build more domestic violence shelters.Mr. Yang has noted that domestic violence is one of the main reasons that families seek shelter and that only 23 percent of domestic-violence victims in shelters are in ones that are designed for them. He says he would build more of those.More police in the subway.Mr. Adams, a former transit police officer, says, “We should have a police officer on every train.” Ms. Garcia wants officers “walking the platforms and riding the actual trains, not just standing around.” Mr. Yang, Mr. McGuire and Mr. Donovan also want more police in the subway. Ms. Morales, Mr. Stringer and Ms. Wiley do not.Help tenants and landlords alike in order to prevent evictions.Mr. Donovan favors a “holistic approach” that would “provide direct rent payments for hard-hit tenants” and “offer stabilizing funds to landlords” who agree not to evict.Joseph Goldstein contributed reporting. More

So far, turnout for local primary elections has been low. Historically, this has not been the case in challenging times.Theoretically, a city that is known for attracting some of the smartest and most ambitious people on earth ought to have a deep bench of gifted, charismatic politicians available to run for its highest offices. But the current election cycle has reminded us, again, that New York, for some time now, has not been that place. The lure of Wall Street and tech siphon off a lot of potential talent, and then those industries do not graciously reciprocate, giving back their most attuned or socially conscious.As compensation, we might get the deliciously viperous instead, just for the engaging fun of it, but there too the current roster is not delivering. When a high point of name calling in a televised debate is one candidate telling another that she sounds like a “press release” — a criticism that Ray McGuire leveled at Maya Wiley during the final Democratic mayoral debate on Wednesday night — it is hard not to feel nostalgic for the sizzle of the old days.Consider the mayoral race of 1977, in the midst of the city’s fiscal crisis, which resulted in the election of Ed Koch. Then, the Democratic primary field offered Mario Cuomo — whom Koch defeated in a runoff — Bella Abzug, Herman Badillo and Percy Sutton, among others. One of the most prominent Black political and business leaders of the 20th century, Sutton had served as an intelligence officer with the Tuskegee Airmen, a Freedom Rider, a lawyer to Malcolm X, a state assemblyman and a longtime Manhattan borough president before he made this bid. No one would ever have to question his commitment to living in New York — at the age of 12 he stowed away on a passenger train from Texas and slept under a sign on 155th Street.The 1977 race marked one of the four occasions during the past half-century that Democratic mayoral primaries in New York drew more than one million voters. No matter how much New Yorkers lay claim to liberal values, political obsession and locavore consumer habits, they do not turn out in enormous numbers for actual local elections. Early-voting and absentee ballot data for the primaries on Tuesday — which should effectively elect the next mayor, city comptroller, Manhattan district attorney and numerous members of the City Council — have not suggested a distinct surge of the kind this fraught and consequential moment would demand.The voting swell in 1977, as well as the other instances in which the tally exceeded one million votes, also coincided with challenging and pivotal moments in the city’s history — in 1973, a period of high and rising crime; in 1989, when the city was reeling from the fallout of Black Monday and the savings and loan crisis, which left a devastating impact on the real estate market; and then in 2001, during the aftermath of Sept. 11. Each one of those moments called, just as the pandemic recovery period does, for a transformational mayor. But for various reasons, the sense of urgency that animated those races is absent now.Jerry Skurnik, the longtime political consultant and data specialist, told me that by Tuesday, when the primary election concludes, he expected a turnout of roughly 800,000 (out of the city’s 3.7 million registered Democrats). He could be wrong, obviously, but the lack of attention and focus New Yorkers have brought to this race suggests that he most likely is not.In an ideal world, more would have been done to persuade people just how crucial their votes are right now, to summon the best and the brightest in advertising, to call on big New York celebrities to lead a get-out-the-vote movement, something like what we saw in Georgia in advance of the January Senate runoffs. “This all should have been integrated as part of the city’s reopening,” George Arzt, another longtime political adviser (currently working with Mr. McGuire) and former press secretary in the Koch administration, told me. He proposed sloganeering along the lines of: “‘A new election, new people for the future of the city. For you, for you children for, your grandchildren — this is the beginning.’”.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;}The mayor’s office did make an investment of $15 million in an education campaign largely targeted at the novelty of ranked-choice voting, another confusing procedural layer in a campaign season complicated by pandemic distraction and an unusual primary date, in June, rather than September. To that end, Mayor Bill de Blasio and the city’s chief democracy officer (yes, New York has a chief democracy officer), Laura Wood, introduced the “Rank Your Pizza’’ challenge, an interactive exercise meant to foster a comfort with listing things according to preference. What many of us learned from this is that the mayor who came in controversially eating pizza with a fork is leaving with a dubious affinity for green peppers over pepperoni (which took a dismal fifth place in his hierarchy).Early voting, which began on June 12, could also have been made easier. So far, the lines have been fairly short, which may reflect the fact that, post-vaccination, many people are perfectly fine with voting on a crowded Primary Day — or it may suggest glitches in the roll out or just the ongoing sense of apathy that has distinguished this race. Although the Board of Elections was pushed to open more early voting sites, Ms. Wood told me, they are not in every instance conveniently located. Some voters in Greenwich Village, for example, are assigned to a site in Hudson Yards.Every mayor is imperfect in his own way, and during periods of modern crisis, the city has not always elected the best person for the office. But it has managed to elect people who have left important and unforgettable imprints: Koch in the late ’70s, who helped to revive the Bronx from the ashes, building thousands of units of affordable housing; David Dinkins as the city’s first Black mayor and Michael Bloomberg in 2001, who redefined development, expanded parkland and grew the tourist industry to record-breaking numbers. What we get next is still anyone’s guess. More

Tali Farhadian Weinstein, who, along with Alvin Bragg, appears to be leading the Democratic field, was attacked over her finances and ads.One went to Yale, the other to Harvard. One was a federal prosecutor in Brooklyn, the other in Manhattan. One would be the first woman to lead the Manhattan district attorney’s office, the other, the first Black person.The two leading Democratic candidates for Manhattan district attorney, Tali Farhadian Weinstein and Alvin Bragg, have similar pedigrees, and one recent poll showed them effectively tied as the primary nears its conclusion on June 22.But Ms. Farhadian Weinstein has given her campaign $8.2 million in recent weeks, multiplying her lead in a fund-raising battle she was already dominating and drawing the ire of rivals who say she is trying to buy the election. She has spent some of the money on televised attacks that other candidates, including several who were not directly targeted, have said are inappropriate.The vitriol was on full display Thursday at the only in-person debate of the primary, as the eight candidates in the race lobbed attacks at one another while focusing much of their energy on Ms. Farhadian Weinstein.One of her opponents, Dan Quart, warned the audience against being deceived by her polish. “Ms. Weinstein’s measured tone should not conceal the true viciousness and lack of truthfulness in her attack,” Mr. Quart said at the debate, referring to an ad and a mailing that he called “disgraceful.” Although there will be a Republican candidate on the ballot in November, whoever wins the primary is almost assured of victory given Manhattan’s overwhelmingly liberal electorate. He or she will take over an office that tries tens of thousands of cases a year and handles some of the most significant investigations in the United States, including a pending inquiry into President Donald J. Trump and his family business.Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, who has been endorsed by Hillary Clinton and Eric H. Holder Jr., the former U.S. attorney general, has long been considered a leader in the race, thanks in part to the more than $4.5 million she has raised from other donors, many of them linked to Wall Street. She has offered a more moderate agenda than most of her competitors, emphasizing the importance of public safety and focusing on hate crimes, sex crimes and domestic violence. But she has been put on the defensive in the race’s final days, after ProPublica reported that she had paid little in federal income tax in four of the six most recent years. She has also faced criticism over both a mailing and television advertisement in which she targeted Mr. Bragg and Mr. Quart in ways that they said were racist and preyed on voters’ fears. At the debate, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s rivals challenged her on both the tax issue and the ad starting in the opening minutes. Alvin Bragg, a leading candidate in the Democratic primary, would be the first Black person to oversee the Manhattan district attorney’s office.Karsten Moran for The New York TimesIn the TV ad, an anonymous woman who identifies herself as a survivor of domestic abuse says that Mr. Bragg and Mr. Quart “would put women and families at risk of further abuse.” The ad and the mailing use stark imagery to suggest Mr. Bragg is a threat to women, a longstanding racist trope about Black men. (The ad and mailing also cast Mr. Quart in a sinister light.) “Two million dollars she put in to besmirch my reputation, and Alvin’s as well,” Mr. Quart said.Mr. Bragg said Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s material had racist overtones in the country’s worst traditions.In response, Ms. Farhadian Weinstein said her criticisms of her two opponents were substantive. She said the same thing in an interview earlier in the day, adding that she did not think the ad was racist.“I put a spotlight on the blind spots of the two men in the race when it comes to violence against women,” she said in the interview.Asked about arguments that she is trying to buy the race, she said, “I’m trying to get my message out.”Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s mailing highlighted incidents after episodes in which both parties file complaints against each other. She and others argue that when prosecutors dismiss such complaints without an investigation, even when both parties agree to the dismissal, it can remain unclear who was the true victim of the violence, and cycles of abuse can continue unchecked.Other candidates, including Mr. Quart, argue that when such complaints are left to linger even when both parties agree they should be dismissed, the legal system prolongs government intervention in potentially harmful ways for those who are trying to move on with their lives.Mr. Bragg, a former deputy attorney general in New York, has sought to find a balance in his campaign between emphasizing public safety and civil rights. He said in an interview on Wednesday that the ad and mailing were a response to the momentum of his campaign.“And it’s the worst kind of response,” he said. “The kind of response that is repugnant, abhorrent and has no place in politics and certainly not the Manhattan district attorney’s race.”Another candidate, Liz Crotty, a former assistant district attorney in Manhattan who has been endorsed by several police unions, criticized Ms. Farhadian Weinstein sharply in the debate and in an interview beforehand.“It maligns the fathers of two young women” — Mr. Bragg and Mr. Quart — “accusing them of being friendly to rapists,” Ms. Crotty said of the mailing at the debate. “This is not what the district attorney’s office is about.” Lucy Lang, another former prosecutor who has trailed only Ms. Farhadian Weinstein and Mr. Bragg in fund-raising and polls, said she agreed with some of the substantive points that Ms. Farhadian Weinstein had made but thought the way the message was delivered was inappropriate.“I think that the way she is conducting her campaign proves that she doesn’t have the values that we need at the district attorney’s office,” Ms. Lang said.Mr. Bragg also took issue with a quotation used in the ad and mailing that says he would be “unfair to rape victims,” which comes from The New York Daily News’s endorsement of Ms. Farhadian Weinstein. The passage in question refers to Mr. Bragg’s intention to reopen cases handled by Linda Fairstein, the lead prosecutor in the Central Park Five case. His supporters say the position is consistent with his pursuit of justice for the wrongfully accused.Peter Neufeld, a founder of the Innocence Project who has endorsed Mr. Bragg, said Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s criticism of her competitor on the issue was puzzling, given that she has also stressed the need to overturn wrongful convictions. But Roberta A. Kaplan, a founder of the Time’s Up Legal Defense Fund and a supporter of Ms. Farhadian Weinstein, said Ms. Farhadian Weinstein’s agenda on sex crimes could be trusted in part because she is a woman.“I hate to play the gender card but here I think it is important to play the gender card,” Ms. Kaplan said. “There is a greater chance that those reforms will succeed if they are being implemented and run by a woman.”Ms. Farhadian Weinstein was also endorsed by The New York Post; Mr. Bragg was endorsed by The New York Times’s editorial board, which is separate from the newsroom.Along with Ms. Crotty, Ms. Lang, and another former prosecutor, Diana Florence, three candidates with no prosecutorial experience — Mr. Quart, Tahanie Aboushi and Eliza Orlins — are competing for voters’ support.The knottiness and specificity of the debate on domestic violence is typical of the race, in which there are strong disagreements between the eight Democratic candidates even as most say they would make significant changes at the district attorney’s office.In the early months of this year, the candidates for the most part focused on those changes, offering policies that they said would make the office less racist and more just, and criticizing the tenure of the current officeholder, Cyrus R. Vance Jr., who announced in March that he would not seek re-election.But as gun violence in New York City rose and Ms. Farhadian Weinstein emerged as a leader in the race, conversation at candidate forums and on the campaign trail has focused on public safety, and on everything that other candidates and their surrogates say is troubling about her campaign. More

The US will officially recognize Juneteenth as a federal holiday on 19 June after Joe Biden signed a bill into law which commemorates the end of slavery in the country. The president described a day to remember the moral stain of slavery but also to celebrate the capacity to heal. Before signing the bill, Biden said: ‘I’ve only been president for several months, but I think this will go down for me as one of the greatest honors I will have had as president’

Juneteenth becomes federal holiday celebrating end of slavery in US More

An ultraconservative judiciary chief appears to have the only real chance of winning after a council of powerful clerics disqualified virtually all the other viable candidates.TEHRAN — Come presidential election time, the streets of central Tehran are usually wallpapered with the candidates’ names and faces, their banners swaying from buildings and streetlights. But this time around, the biggest banners bear no names, only a simple message: Vote on Friday.One common poster shows the bloody severed hand of Gen. Qassim Suleimani — the Iranian commander whose killing in an American drone strike in January 2020 brought throngs of Iranians into the streets in mourning — casting a white ballot.“Do it for his sake,” the poster implores.The message is unsubtle: Vote, and you support the Islamic Revolution for which General Suleimani gave his life. Don’t, and you undermine the whole system.Since the revolution in 1979 toppled the monarchy, Iran has been run by parallel branches of the government. One is elected and the other is appointed, composed of the supreme leader and powerful councils of clerics. While Iran has never been a true democracy over the past four decades, there was always a degree of choice and competition in elections for president and parliament. The outcomes were never a certainty.But even those limited freedoms, which shrank after a contested election in 2009 led to widespread unrest, have nearly disappeared in this election cycle. The country is now moving increasingly toward what amounts to a one-party system whereby the top council of clerics that vets candidates eliminates anyone seen as a challenge to their conservative policies and views.The Islamic Republic’s hierarchy has long used election turnout to try to bolster its legitimacy, pointing to robust voter participation as proof that Iranians really do choose their leaders. If voter turnout is low on Friday, that could be regarded as a sign of growing disaffection.Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, blamed Iran’s enemies and the foreign media for voter apathy in a live televised speech on Wednesday.“The most important part of the elections is the people’s participation,” he said. “It means the Islamic Republic has the people’s support. There is no tool more powerful than voter participation.” He added that he “accepted the people’s complaints, but I do not accept not participating.”A poster of presidential candidate Ebrahim Raisi.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesThus it was that Iman, 28, an information technology worker who was shopping for lamps in Tehran on Monday, said, “I will vote because the destiny of my nation is very important to me.”He said he would vote for Ebrahim Raisi, the ultraconservative judiciary chief who appeared to have the only real chance of winning after the Guardian Council — the body of top clerics that vets the contenders — disqualified virtually all the other viable choices.“You’re doing what? Really?” said his new wife Melika, 21, grabbing her husband’s arm in alarm. “If you vote for Raisi, we’re done,” she said, only half-joking. (Like some other voters interviewed for this article, they declined to give their full names, for fear of speaking too openly about politics.)The wife rolled her eyes as her husband listed what he said were Mr. Raisi’s qualifications: promises to battle the corruption many Iranians say is crushing their economy; the forcefulness to stand up to the United States in renewed negotiations over limiting Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for lifting American sanctions, which are deepening those economic problems.“I don’t believe in any of them,” said Melika, a computer engineer. “I’m just tired of all of it. I’m done.”All across Tehran this week, Iranians were saying much the same thing.“It’s absolutely hopeless,” said Reza, 33, a grocery store owner from Kermanshah, a city in western Iran, who had come to Tehran’s Grand Bazaar to shop for his upcoming wedding. “I have a problem with the whole system because I can’t express my opinions. The only way that I can show them I’m unhappy is by not voting.”Women attending a presidential campaign event held by Ebrahim Raisi this week in Tehran.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesMany moderate-leaning Iranians appear to be planning to sit the election out, according to polls, commentary and interviews. They were already deeply disillusioned with candidates from the more moderate reformist movement who pledge to change Iran from within the existing system, rallying votes only to fail to deliver once elected.But then the Guardian Council disqualified a number of prominent politicians — including the current vice president, former speaker of Parliament, a former president and a former minister — from both reformist and conservative factions.That led many to conclude that the elections were engineered to produce victory for Mr. Raisi, known for his strict conservative views and what rights activists call a dire record of human rights abuses including mass executions. He has been sanctioned by the United States.Mr. Raisi, 60, also is seen as an eventual successor to Mr. Khamenei, 81.“Everything has already been set: The president has already been chosen,” said Nabiollah Razavi, 40, the manager of a popular restaurant in north Tehran who said none of his staff planned to vote. “There’s no difference for normal people, whether it’s a conservative or a reformist. Just look — the reformists were in power for eight years, and this is where we are.”Mr. Razavi was referring to the outgoing president, Hassan Rouhani, regarded as a moderate who had promised social freedoms, economic improvements and better relations with the world because of the 2015 nuclear agreement, which has been at risk of collapse since President Donald Trump withdrew the United States three years ago.Having entered the presidency on a wave of optimism, Mr. Rouhani will depart having failed to fulfill his pledges. Some of the worst crackdowns happened on his watch.“We want the situation to get better,” Mr. Razavi said, “but as long as it’s the Islamic Republic, this is the way it’s going to be.”Supporters of Mr. Raisi this week.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesAfter the authorities winnowed the candidates, a coalition of reformist parties announced for the first time that it would not endorse a candidate for president. Prominent figures from this coalition said openly that the elections were a sham.But divisions have emerged over the past week, with reformist leaders sending conflicting messages.Mir Hossein Mousavi, the leader of the Green Movement opposition party, who has been under house arrest since the unrest that erupted after his 2009 defeat in an election he described as rigged, issued a statement saying that the “republic” part of the Islamic Republic had lost its meaning. Mr. Mousavi said he stood with people “who are fed up with engineered and humiliating elections.”In a statement issued Wednesday, more than 100 prominent reformist activists, dissidents and politicians called for people to boycott the vote and instead turn their grievances into peaceful disobedience.But another reformist opposition leader under house arrest, Mehdi Karroubi, urged the public to cast ballots as the only means to “determine Iran’s fate under the current circumstances.” He endorsed Abdolnaser Hemmati, the former central bank governor, regarded as the only moderate left in the race.A former reformist president, Mohammad Khatami, said on Wednesday that he hoped “people show resolve and participate” in elections to protest the predetermined result, according to Iranian media reports.Also on Wednesday, a coalition of 15 reformist parties said they would vote and endorsed Mr. Hemmati to show they opposed the “dangerous orchestrated plan” for the election.Mr. Hemmati, for his part, has said that his only electoral rival is voter apathy. If the public turned out in large numbers, he predicted, he will win.“I know the president will have problems. They will interfere with his work. They will create obstacles for him. But it doesn’t mean we should leave the stage and not fight,” Mr. Hemmati said in an appearance on the social media platform Clubhouse on Wednesday night.It remains possible that Mr. Raisi will not get the simple majority needed to avoid a runoff.A supporter of the presidential candidate Abdolnaser Hemmati.Arash Khamooshi for The New York TimesBut the late endorsements for Mr. Hemmati were not expected to generate the kind of turnout that could end in an upset for Mr. Raisi. The most recent polls predict voter participation of about 42 percent, low for Iranian presidential races.“If they think by calling for participation, people are going to come out, it’s a joke,” said Abbas Abdi, a political analyst who is close to the reformists. At a Raisi rally in central Tehran on Wednesday evening, children set up chairs while volunteers distributed flags and cardboard visors that bore a picture of General Suleimani embracing Mr. Raisi.As people waved Iranian flags and blue flags adorned with Mr. Suleimani’s face, a speaker told the audience that Mr. Raisi would eliminate all inequality in Iran and eradicate “the slightest speck of corruption.”Two women in attendance said they respected Mr. Raisi’s qualifications as a judiciary head who had battled corruption in the past. But more than that, they said showing up was a patriotic duty.“I want to show my support to the revolution,” said Zahra Shahrjerdi, 61, a retired teacher.“There are problems in the Islamic Republic, but we believe the system is good,” said her daughter, Fatemeh Ghanaati, 35, a primary schoolteacher.Others, however, had long since reached the opposite conclusion, that the problem was the Islamic Republic. Presidents might come and go, but the real power remained concentrated in the hands of the supreme leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, who some presidential candidates in this election have referred to as the “shadow government.”“I voted for four different individuals in the past, and they couldn’t do the job,” said Zohre Afrouz, 58, a seamstress who said she could barely afford rent and had given up on ever buying a car despite 12-hour workdays.She regretted her vote because no matter who the president is, “all of them are confined to a framework, and the policies are dictated to them,” she said. “My vote has no value.”Amir, 30, a jewelry salesman at the Grand Bazaar, was blunter.“Our country, it should be demolished and rebuilt,” he said. “It’s no use.”Vivian Yee reported from Tehran, and Farnaz Fassihi from New York. More