A firstfor New York city in modern history

NEW YORK (TIP): The top three Democratic mayoral contenders are demanding a manual recount of the June 22 primary election if the final vote count has narrow enough margins — a process that would be a first for the city in modern history.

“It is without precedent in a New York City mayoral race or any citywide office,” said election lawyer Stanley Schlein, who represents former Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia in her lawsuit against the Board of Elections.

Garcia, Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams and lawyer Maya Wiley have all filed similar petitions in court to protect their rights to challenge the election results.

A final vote count is expected on July 12. Adams currently leads Garcia by 14,755 votes with Wiley just 347 votes behind the former Sanitation Commissioner.

The BOE has yet to tabulate some 125,000 absentee ballots and run all the votes through the city’s new ranked-choice system.

Under state law a manual recount is triggered if the difference between candidate figures is under .5 percent of the total votes cast or about 4,500 votes with 935,000 ballots cast in the primary.

In the event of a hand re-canvass, BOE officials would pour over individual ballots where voters made irregular markings like circling a candidate’s name instead of filling in the bubble. A judge would oversee the laborious process. Experts believe it would take “weeks and weeks” to do a manual recount. While there hasn’t been a manual recount in a local mayoral race in recent times, there was a hand re-canvass in a 1917 Republican primary.

There was also hand recount in the 2019 Queens district attorney race that took about three weeks for 100,00 votes.