New York becomes a case study in Democrats' incompetent running of elections

 Washington Examiner:

Former President Donald Trump took a victory lap after a discrepancy over test ballots threw New York City’s Democratic primary for mayor into disarray.

“Watch the mess you are about to see in New York City, it will go on forever,” Trump said in a statement issued through his political action committee on Wednesday. “They should close the books and do it all over again, the old-fashioned way, when we had results that were accurate and meaningful.”

But the New York City Board of Elections’s struggles with the first contest to feature ranked-choice voting also has broader implications for Republicans opposed to Democratic legislation they claim would amount to a federal takeover of elections. Many Republicans are instead supportive of a series of state-level bills described as curtailing voter fraud.

To them, the failure to clear 135,000 test ballot images, which led to the since-retracted reporting of results that reduced the lead of Democratic front-runner Eric Adams, illustrates the problems they say need to be addressed in liberal jurisdictions across the country.

“It calls into question the competence of all Democrats who administer elections,” said Republican strategist John Feehery. “And these guys want to federalize this kind of incompetence? Give me a break.”

The Democrats’ For the People Act passed the House earlier this year but failed to overcome a Senate filibuster. Sen. Joe Manchin, a centrist Democrat from West Virginia, sided with his party on advancing the bill but said he would oppose its final passage if it made it to the Senate floor.

Democrats argued that the bill was necessary to curb partisan gerrymandering, correct campaign finance laws that give too much influence to corporations and the wealthy, and prevent state-level assaults on voting rights. Republicans countered that it was a liberal wish list mainly intended to rewrite election rules in favor of the Democrats a year ahead of a midterm campaign in which President Joe Biden’s party will be defending narrow majorities in both houses of Congress.

It is part of a broader debate over the trade-offs between ballot security and access that has become more intense because each side perceives the other to be trying to rig the rules to their partisan advantage. Democrats also contend that many GOP “election integrity” measures have a disparate impact on racial minorities, comparing them to attempts to prevent black voters from casting their ballots during Jim Crow.

“Biden’s DOJ has it backwards — New York shows we should be enacting measures that improve election integrity, not tearing them down,” said Republican National Committee rapid response director Tommy Pigott, referring to a Justice Department lawsuit against a controversial voting law passed by Georgia’s GOP-controlled Legislature. “Instead, Democrats in D.C. want to nationalize New York’s election failures with their H.R. 1 power grab. New York’s disaster … A preview of what’s coming to elections near you if Democrats get their way, whether you like it or not.”

Still, many Republicans could not help but notice the similarities between Adams’s statements decrying New York City’s election troubles with claims made by Trump and his allies about last year’s presidential race.

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“Let me get this straight?” tweeted Donald Trump Jr. “You can be off by 135,000 votes in a New York City mayoral primary alone but if someone loses the White House by less than 45,000 across multiple states in a presidential election you can’t have any questions.”

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Democrats had a credibility problem on elections before this fiasco.  Their attempt to shut down debate on their handling of elections looks like a coverup of vote fraud to millions of voters.