New York’s struggle to accommodate mail-in voting results in nearly 100,000 invalid ballots

New mail-in ballots are being sent to nearly 100,000 Brooklyn residents who received ballots with someone else's name on the return envelope.

"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," said Michael Ryan, the executive director of the New York City Board of Elections, adding that "it is also essential to point out that this is a vendor error."

Ryan added that the Rochester-based company, Phoenix Graphics, has agreed to pay for the cost of the additional printing of the error-ridden ballots, while the Board ensures that the newly printed ballots are processed appropriately.

Ryan also shared with the Gothamist that he was notified of the issue by a Brooklyn voter on Saturday, and that his team immediately contacted the vendor. The vendor "believed the error was limited to voters in Brooklyn, in a single print run. That printing took place on September 17th and included 99,477 voters."

"We want to, out of an abundance of caution, give a reprinted ballot to all of the voters potentially affected in that first print run," Ryan said Tuesday.

Despite efforts to correct the blunder on Tuesday, the Board came under heavy scrutiny from elected leaders and voters who charged them with not being able to carry out the essential elements of its central mission.

"I don't know how many times we're going to see the same thing happen at the Board of Elections and be surprised," Mayor de Blasio said at his daily briefing Tuesday. "There's some good people there, and I know there's some people that are trying hard, but it just is not a modern agency and it must be changed. It just structurally doesn't work."

Reporter Nathan McDermott took to Twitter on Monday: "I just got my New York mail-in ballot today and the security envelope I'm supposed to put it in and sign has some other guy's name and address on it. Gothamist is already reporting other cases, so this is looking to be a widespread problem."

McDermott said "according to Gothamist, signing the envelope with another persons name/address on it invalidates the ballot, so who knows how many people's votes could be potentially thrown out."

This hiccup could spell trouble for millions of New Yorkers—with Spectrum News reporting in August that "5 million New Yorkers could end up voting absentee in this year's general election, but June's primary heightened major flaws in the state’s absentee voting process." The outlet reported that in a normal election year, only "5-8 percent of New Yorkers vote absentee."

The Atlantic noted that the big issue in New York is that it has not properly adjusted to accommodate the flurry of absentee votes that will be coming in amid the 2020 presidential election. But New York is just one of many states that will likely have trouble this election season.

The outlet reported: "Voting is being transformed by the pandemic. But no state has built new election infrastructure. No state has the time or the money to make sure vote-counting will go smoothly in November. And just about every state is about to be hit with a massive surge of absentee ballots."