I don’t need to tell New Yorkers that the New York City Board of Elections badly bungled the release of preliminary ranked-choice results from the city’s recent mayoral primary. Between this serious mistake and many previous well-documented mishaps, such as sending out defective ballots to approximately 100,000 New Yorkers before the 2020 presidential election and incorrectly removing roughly 200,000 from the voter rolls before the 2016 election, the board clearly has plenty of room for improvement.
But its failings are not the biggest concern that emerged from the city’s recent primary election. That notorious honor belongs to those who are trying to leverage the episode to cast additional, baseless doubt on the legitimacy of U.S. elections.