NEW YORK • Nearly 100,000 New York City voters received defective absentee ballots, election officials acknowledged on Tuesday, a far-reaching error that raised doubts about the city's ability to handle a pandemic-era presidential election with millions of mail-in ballots expected.
The problems were mostly confined to Brooklyn, where voters expressed outrage and confusion after seeing that their ballots had mismatched names and addresses on the outer and return envelopes.
Mayor Bill de Blasio called the situation "appalling". "I don't know how many times we're going to see the same thing happen at the Board of Elections and be surprised," he said.
The faulty ballots come as President Donald Trump has made repeated baseless challenges to the accuracy and integrity of mail-in voting. On Monday evening, Mr Trump had shared at least four news articles about the New York issues on Twitter.
The problems in New York are yet another blemish for the New York City Board of Elections, which is run by a board of Democrats and Republicans, and has a long history of mismanaging elections.
Mr Michael Ryan, the board's executive director, blamed the board's vendor, Phoenix Graphics, a commercial printing company based in Rochester, New York, which was hired to mail out ballots in Brooklyn and Queens.
The foul-up was briefly addressed on Tuesday at a Board of Elections meeting, as Mr Ryan, a Democrat, said the error was limited to "one print run". He added that the vendor would bear the cost of sending out new ballots to all potentially affected voters.
"It is essential that confidence be established in this process and that we make certain that all of the voters who potentially have a problem have a full and fair opportunity to remedy that problem," Mr Ryan said.
Officials encouraged voters to e-mail or call a hotline if they received an erroneous ballot. But phone lines already appear to be jammed.
Ms Merrily Rosso, who lives in the Bushwick neighbourhood of Brooklyn, received an absentee ballot on Monday with a stranger's name on it. She looked him up and discovered that he lived nearby.
Concerned, she called the Brooklyn Board of Elections twice. The first time, it hung up. The second time, the phone just rang.
So she called the New York City Board of Elections. There were roughly 80 callers ahead of her, and she hung up.
Mr Michael Weiss, a musician who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, said the ballot mailed to his partner had someone else's name on it. He walked it over to the person listed on the ballot.
"She opened her mail to find another neighbour's ballot in her envelope, which I took and hand delivered to him around the corner. Of course, he also received someone else's ballot in the mail," Mr Weiss said.
Phoenix Graphics, a family-owned firm, has worked with the city Board of Elections since at least 2010, according to city records, including during the June primaries.
Wrong ballots signed by voters will be invalid.
As part of an effort to battle misinformation, popular video-sharing app TikTok on Tuesday launched a US election guide.
TikTok's in-app guide provides links to voter registration pages and access to election information from sources such as the National Association of Secretaries of State and BallotReady, according to head of US public policy Michael Beckerman.
BallotReady chief executive officer Alex Niemczewski said: "Younger voters often do not realise everything that will appear on their ballot, and we believe that TikTok can help them vote their entire ballot."
The election guide makes its debut as TikTok battles to stop a ban ordered by President Trump. The company has challenged the ban in court as being capricious and politically motivated.
NYTIMES, AGENCE FRANCE-PRESSE
