Disqualified Votes can be Corrected Up to Five Days after Voters are Notified by BOE

By Yehudit Garmaise

   Although the NYC Board of Elections (BOE) reported yesterday that 96% of the record number of 713,536 absentee ballots cast were deemed valid, the remaining 4%, of mail-in ballots were disqualified for what they call “filing errors.”

   Of the 4% of disqualified ballots, which total 15,330, BOE spokeswoman Valerie Velazquez, said that approximately 40% of those, or 6,132 ballot can be corrected by voters for up to five days after the day they are notified by election officials.

  Most of the remaining 60% of disqualified ballots cannot be corrected because they were cast by voters who also cast ballots in person.

   Although 4% of disqualified ballots may sound like a lot, the number of uncountable votes greatly decreased after June’s Democratic presidential primary, in which 20% of the 84,000 New York City mail-in ballots had to be discarded, mainly because voters had neglected to sign their oath statements, and thereby disqualified their votes.

   After so many votes were unfortunately disqualified in June, the BOE redesigned the oath statement in the mail-in ballots for the presidential election that took place on Nov. 3.