Tucker: NYC's Board of Elections debacle
'Tucker Carlson Tonight' host slams how 'dumb, incompetent, dishonest people are in charge' of the elections
Last week, Democrats in New York City voted for a new mayor. It’s the end of the de Blasio era. New York is a one-party state — Republicans are as rare and exotic there as Esperanto speakers — so the Democratic primary is effectively the same as the general election. In New York, they don’t have partisan battles. All is the bickering is between various shades of corrupt left-wingers. So in some ways, you’d think it would be easier to get elections done. But you’d be wrong. Days later, we still have no idea who the next mayor of New York will be. All the votes are in. They’ve all been counted, supposedly. The problem is that no one in charge can do math. Addition is the main stumbling block.
It’s hard to overstate just how embarrassing this is.
In Brazil — a poor country, where a lot of people have far less than the homeless do in New York — the latest national election took a total of four hours to tally. They just added up all the votes and announced the result. That’s how it’s supposed to work.
But not in New York. It’s just too complicated. All those numbers. After last November’s elections, it took three months for New York's "Board of Elections" to figure out who the state was sending to Congress. It may take that long to determine who the new mayor is.
REVISED VOTE COUNT AGAIN SHOWS TIGHT NYC MAYORAL RACE FOLLOWING TUESDAY'S TALLY TUMULT
The funny thing is, as of yesterday morning, it seemed pretty clear. Eric Adams, a former NYPD captain, was well ahead of everyone else in the race. He had a double-digit lead. Then, in the afternoon, things changed dramatically. City officials released new vote tallies indicating that Adams might lose. His twelve-point lead had shrunk to two points, with thousands of absentee ballots still outstanding. How could that happen eight days after the vote? It seemed impossible. Nothing like that has ever happened in the history of this country, at least since the presidential election in November. Eric Adams, understandably, wanted to know what the hell was going on. In response, the guardians of our democracy mocked him. Got questions about an election result? You must be Donald Trump.
Rachel Maddow impersonator Chris Hayes accursed Adams of engaging in "corrosive Big Lie conspiracy-theorizing." "This is some Donald Trump" crap, explained some kid at Vox.
"This is the argument Trump used to declare election fraud," said another. And so on. We were starting to think maybe QAnon was involved. Maybe Eric Adams was staging an insurrection.
Then, late last night, we found out that Adams was right to be skeptical. We learned this, not from journalists of course. They were too busy sneering on Twitter. The facts of the case were brought to us by betters in the online prediction markets -- people who’d put money on the mayor's race, and had a stake in the outcome. They can do math. So they did the math and realized the numbers were fraudulent. Based on their reporting, and they’re not even reporters, a few hours later, officials in New York had had to release a statement. The statement wasn't even printed on official "Board of Elections" stationary, assuming that even exists. It was drafted on the "Notes" application from an iPhone, then it was screenshotted, and posted on social media. Message: we’re totally lame. The statement explained that the city’s vote tally had in fact, "included both test and election night results, producing approximately 135,000 additional records."
"Additional records." What’s an additional record? Well, it’s a fake vote. 135,000 fake votes.
LIBERAL WRITERS ATTACKED ERIC ADAMS FOR QUESTIONING NEW YORK CITY MAYORAL VOTING NUMBERS
That’s a debacle so profound that even Bill DeBlasio, glazing up glassy-eyed from his one-hitter, claimed to be totally blown away.
BILL DEBLASIO: Deeply disappointing and indicative of the fact that the Board of Elections is broken, structurally broken, must be changed. Look, I don't know how many times we're gonna have this conversation. We can no longer have a partisan Board of Elections, it does not work. It's not modern. It's not professional.
It’s structurally broken. You hear that so often, always to justify some power grab or another, a rewrite of history. What does structurally broken mean? It means dumb, incompetent, dishonest people are in charge. The problem is not the system. The problem is the people running it. Last year, the New York Times reported that quote: "Some staffers at the Elections Board read or watch Netflix at the office. Others regularly fail to show up for work, with no fear of discipline. Several employees said some staffers punch in and then leave to go shopping or to the gym." One employee, "caught workers smoking marijuana at the Brooklyn voting machine warehouse on an election night." But remember America: don’t question the election results. Only fascists do that. Fascists and the Qanon army.
It’d be funny if this were confined to New York. Like a lot of things – bed bugs for example. They’re all over New York, but you don’t have them. They don’t really bother you. It’s kind of hilarious that they have them. But this is not confined t New York. The very same people running the city’s Democratic primary are now demanding at full volume that if you don’t agree you’re a racist control of the entire country’s election system. Remember HR1 — that’s what it is. Put these people in charge of your elections.
That should worry you, because these people are incompetent. They have no skills of any kind. They couldn’t paint a garage door if they had to. They don’t know where food comes from. They don’t make their own beds. They’re useless, which is why they’re so miserable. People with no skills are unhappy. They’re totally incapable of anything that requires discipline or precision. Now, a long time ago, we created gender studies departments precisely so that people like this would have something to do during the day. Get them out of circulation and get them a little job. But it wasn’t enough of them. Now they want real power. They’d like control of the power grid. They’d like to fly your airplanes. And now they want to run your elections. Yeah, no.
They can’t do that. Because not only are they without skills, they’re crazed ideologues. They think math is racist.
For hundreds of years, the United States had the best election system in the world, you can’t really improve on it. You vote on Election Day, you vote in person, with an ID to prove you are who you say you are, and you use paper ballots, so there’s no question who you voted for because we can all check. Canada does it to this day. For all of Canada’s problems, that’s how they run their elections. In fact, most of the rest of the world does that. But no, we can’t do that anymore. Because racism. So instead, we have to put people like this in charge of our elections:
LIBERAL WOMAN: Listen kiddo, I get it. I don't like the two-party system, I think our country is corrupt. Quite frankly I don’t wanna vote for Biden, feels like voting for a Republican but I’m going to do you know why? (Screaming) Because the alternative is a f------ fascist, a fascist, a fascist!
LIBERAL WOMAN: I just saw a f------ pro-life sign driving down the f------ road. I just want to say you’re so f------ stupid, AHH!
LIBERAL MAN: You have to stop sleeping with Republicans, knock that off they are all going to start dying off or inbreeding anyway.
LIBERAL WOMAN: I’m terrified. Listen to me, Republicans. Listen. You are the people are history you warned about, they warned us about people like you. Pay attention, we are losing our democracy!
That’s the coalition of the unhappy.
"We are losing our democracy!" Pretty amusing, given that just a few years ago, New York City changed election law to make the process less democratic.
NYC MAYORAL PRIMARY IN CHAOS AFTER 135,000 PRE-ELECTION TEST BALLOTS COUNTED
Instead of just counting all the ballots and choosing a winner based on who has the most votes, that’s called democracy, New York City, along with the state of Maine, now has a system known as "ranked-choice voting." In "ranked-choice voting," people don't vote for one candidate on their ballot. No. Because the system wasn’t confusing enough, now they rank up to five candidates in order of their preference. It’s a multiple-choice test. Then, once all the ballots are counted, the candidate with the lowest number of first-choice votes is eliminated. Then -- and this is the key part -- all of the votes for that eliminated candidate are then re-allocated to other candidates. If you voted for the last-place finisher as your top choice, your vote is re-allocated to the next candidate on your list. This process repeats for several rounds.
It's hard to imagine anything more pointlessly complicated, or crazy, or undemocratic than this. Ranked-choice voting lets the losers pick the winners. So, why in the name of ‘Democracy’ would you be for that? Well, as with most bad ideas, "ranked-choice voting" is a product of the equity craze. Democracy isn't the point.
The people who lobbied for ranked-choice voting in New York were explicit about why they were doing it.
One of those activists, a woman called Amy Torres, told lawmakers in 2019 that ranked-choice voting, "is an option that would really increase the power of the Asian-American and Pacific Islander electorate because we would be engaged on the same issues that the rest of the electorate is engaged on."
Now, the first tip-off to the insanity of all of this is a system that empowers people based on their skin color or ethnicity. That is racist and wrong, and we should reject it out of hand every time. As a literal matter, what did she just say? And of course, the answer is nothing. It was, as it so often is, meaningless word salad, it was meant to hide, rather than expose, the real point of ranked-choice voting. The real point is that it gives the people in charge a lot more power than they had before, it gives them more control over the outcome. And you’re seeing this in New York.
DE BLASIO JOKES ABOUT PURSUING COMEDY AS A SECOND ACT, PUNCHLINE FALLS FLAT
It shouldn't be a surprise to anyone that the people running New York are now using ranked-choice voting to shaft Eric Adams. Now, why is that? Eric Adams is African American, he’s liberal, he’s the Brooklyn Bureau President, you’d think White liberals would love him. Oh no, they hate him. Why is that? Because he says things that are true. Things like, maybe we shouldn't allow criminals to knife random people on the subway.
ERIC ADAMS: It doesn’t make any consolation if a police officer shoots someone illegally or if it’s a gangbanger in blue jeans. No matter what community I’m in, people want their families to be safe and that resonates with everyday New Yorkers and I know my message will resonate with them. (edit) If we’re not safe in the city, companies will not come to New York. Our multi-billion dollar tourism industry will not return if tourists are shot at Grand Central Station. And so the first order of business is to get the violence under control.
It’s interesting. By saying maybe it’s a good idea to have a subway you can use, where you don’t get shot while waiting for your train, Eric Adams predicted that he would unite the city across racial lines. And guess what happened? He did. Because every normal person agrees with that. Eric Adams won most black and Hispanic neighborhoods in New York City, in addition to Staten Island. You’d think White liberals would be happy about this. They hate it. They want to stop Eric Adams.
Eric Levitz at New York magazine was honest about this last week.
In a column, he described Eric Adams, who is a full-blown liberal, by the way, as "too right-ring," and then he said, in a line that is worth remembering, Eric Adams is conservative because his base is non-White voters. How interesting is that/ he’s acknowledging Eric Adams is pulling non-White voters, and that’s why he, as a white liberal, cannot support him.
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In other words, Eric Adams is not under their control. He’s against defunding the police. He’s not funded by Goerge Soros. He doesn’t have some dystopian nihilistic view of what the city should be. He doesn’t talk about equity as much of the rest of them. So they’re not under his control, and they want to crush him. He’s too right-wing. They’re admitting that, out in the open.
Meanwhile, the board of elections is admitting it just invented 100,000 votes to bury Eric Adams. It’s not hard to see why they’re doing that. When you don't need voters, you don't need to lie to them anymore.
This article is adapted from Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on the June 30, 2021, edition of "Tucker Carlson Tonight."