The great debate about the efficacy of mail-in ballots hit New York City last week when a printing mishap affected absentee ballots in Brooklyn, resulting in an estimated 100,000 voters receiving return envelopes with errors. Michael Ryan, New York City Board of Elections’ Executive Director, said these ballots came with an incorrect “oath envelope.”
Some of the ballots had errors such as informing voters to “mark the oval to the left” when, in fact, the ovals were above the candidates’ names. Another issue pointed out was that some ballots were missing slashes between the words “military” and “absentee,” which led to confusion.
Valerie Vazquez-Diaz, a spokeswoman for the Board of Elections, said the error affected 99,477 voters, according to CNN. In addition to the errors, about 1,000 ballots had incorrect names and addresses.
Mayor Bill de Blasio criticized the Board of Elections and said, “They have to fix this immediately. This is appalling. It is so easy to avoid this mistake and it is very easy to fix this mistake.”
TREND FORECAST: While Democrats have been pushing for mail-in ballots, President Trump said last week, “Mail ballots, they cheat. Mail ballots are very dangerous for this country because of cheaters. They go collect them. They are fraudulent in many cases. They have to vote. They should have voter ID, by the way.”
Beyond the Brooklyn ballot issue, The New York Times reported new allegations of ballot harvesting in Minnesota and voter fraud cases in North Carolina.
Thus, as we have forecast, minus a wild card, it is highly probable it will be long after Election Day before it is determined which candidate is the winner of The Presidential Reality Show®.
