| | |  | BY STEVEN SHEPARD AND RYAN HEATH | | With help from Joanne Kenen WHAT MAINE CAN TEACH NYC — Senior campaign and elections editor Steve Shepard emails Nightly: In an effort to undo Tuesday’s snafu, the New York City Board of Elections released new ranked choice results today from last week’s Democratic mayoral primary. Eric Adams still “leads” Kathryn Garcia by a little more than 2 percentage points, and Maya Wiley is right behind Garcia. So the removal of the more than 100,000 mistakenly counted test ballots didn’t make much of a difference. Counting fake ballots was obviously a major mistake. But it’s fair to say that these results aren’t real, either: They don’t include any of more than 120,000 mail ballots still left to be counted. That’s why it was also a big mistake, many elections experts say, to release these results at all. “Why would you run a tabulation without any of the absentees?” said Matt Dunlap, the former Maine secretary of state who oversaw the implementation of ranked choice voting in his state, the first to adopt it broadly last decade. “You’re no better off than you were on Election Night. … It’s not going to affect the integrity of the election, but it does breed mistrust.” I phoned Dunlap this afternoon because I’d covered a number of Maine elections that came down to the ranked choice tabulation — most memorably, a congressional race in 2018 in which the Republican incumbent, Bruce Poliquin, received slightly more votes than his Democratic challenger, Jared Golden. But neither came close to 50 percent in a four-candidate election, and Golden ended up overtaking Poliquin in the ranked choice tabulation more than a week later. That race was sometimes messy: a recount, in addition to Poliquin’s suit over the ranked choice results, which claimed that electing a member of Congress under the system ran afoul of federal election laws and the Constitution. But, ultimately, the ranked choice system worked as it was designed. Maine counted all of the ballots, then invited the news media — and the public, watching live on Facebook — into Dunlap’s office to watch the tabulation as it happened. The computer software Maine used eliminated both the third- and fourth-place candidates and reallocated those votes accordingly. Down to just two candidates, Golden won.
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Jet skiers ride in the East River in New York City. | Spencer Platt/Getty Images | But what’s happening in New York — Tuesday with the dummy votes, and today without them — violated two of those principles: New York’s count didn’t include more than 10 percent of the votes, and it was conducted entirely behind closed doors. Running the tabulation before all the votes are tallied means that officials aren’t actually sure of how the candidates rank once all the ballots are in, which determines the order in which they’re eliminated. Only then do their votes move to other candidates. It’s not just an academic point: Garcia and Wiley are in an extremely close battle for second place, separated by just more than 300 votes — but only one of them will ultimately advance to a head-to-head tabulation against Adams in the ranked choice process. Who that will be could very well — almost certainly will — come down to how those mail ballots break. And then there’s the astounding lack of transparency from the city Board of Elections, which finally explained what happened on Tuesday in a post-10:30 p.m. tweet (using a screenshot from an iPhone’s “Notes” app), but has otherwise kept the process hidden both from reporters and the public. It’s a stark contrast to how Dunlap opened the doors to his office for the process to play out in public. “Not letting people watch is not something I would do,” said Dunlap, who’s now the state auditor in Maine. “New York is a different place. We’ve got the Red Sox; you’ve got the Yankees. It’s just a different way of doing business.” Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Get ready to see your favorite college athletes in ads: The NCAA gave its member institutions sweeping discretion today to set rules that allow players to make money on everything from product pitches to autograph signings. Reach out with news, tips and ideas for us at sshepard@politico.com and rheath@politico.com, or on Twitter at @POLITICO_Steve and @PoliticoRyan.
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A message from AARP: Millions of family caregivers are struggling to provide care for their older parents and spouses. Many are sacrificing their income, tapping into life savings, and taking on debt to keep their loved ones safe—at home and out of nursing homes that could put their lives at risk. Family caregivers are reaching their breaking point. Congress must pass the Credit for Caring Act now to give caregivers some of the relief they desperately need. Learn more. | | | COUNTING LESSONS FROM IRELAND AND AUSTRALIA — Global Translations author Ryan Heath adds: Yes, it’s ridiculous that the New York Board of Elections accidentally counted around 135,000 ballots that were not real in the city’s recent Democratic mayoral primary. It’s even more ridiculous that it happened in a confusing simulation that was sold to the public as a confidence-boosting election update. The lawsuits have already started. But the solutions are relatively simple, if only the board’s people problem could be fixed. The root causes of New York’s election mess aren’t ranked choice voting as a system, or the software used to run the vote count. Ranked choice voting works fine in other countries from Ireland to Australia, and from San Francisco to Maine. The core problem is lack of transparency from an election board riven with nepotism, and which has refused expert support and money. Ireland provides one example of how to conduct a ranked choice election simply and transparently. Even with the country’s complicated system for its national assembly — which sees three to five people elected from each of 39 large districts — Ireland’s 2020 election was close, but not confusing. Ireland updates its vote totals after each round of counting. Each time a candidate is eliminated, the public is updated about where that candidate’s second-preference votes were redistributed. There was no scenario where a race suddenly shrank from 13 candidates down to two, as the New York Board of Elections attempted to communicate on Tuesday, before it had even processed absentee ballots. Ireland also has no problem counting its ballots quickly. Around 2 million people voted in its 2020 election — more than double the number in the NYC mayoral primary — and the winners were clear within three days. New York took a week just to miscount its Election Day votes. Australia’s system for counting ranked choice ballots more closely resembles New York City’s, only faster. Full vote tallies for all Election Day votes are provided on election night in Australia. Software glitches aren’t a factor because people count the paper ballots by hand. I’ve worked both as a vote watcher and as a neutral election administrator in my home country, and it is not that complicated. What it takes is a trained and complete counting team. Yes, money helps to build a smooth ranked choice system. Because voting is compulsory Down Under, Australia’s independent national and state election commissions have plenty of financing. As an Australian voter, I can vote at any voting center in the country, or at any embassy, on national Election Day. Those same independent commissions also run local votes: There’s no scenario where local incompetence, corruption or under-resourcing becomes a factor. Given major players in New York city and state politics haven’t done the hard work to reform the New York Board of Elections, it’s time to ask: Is it better to just abolish it, and start from scratch with a new one? A properly resourced and independent New York election commission would show that ranked choice voting is not that hard, nor is it the problem with NYC’s mayoral election.
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| | SUBSCRIBE TO WEST WING PLAYBOOK: Add West Wing Playbook to keep up with the power players, latest policy developments and intriguing whispers percolating inside the West Wing and across the highest levels of the Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today. | | | | | | | — Rep. Adam Smith pushes back against private funding for National Guard deployment: The chair of the House Armed Services Committee said today that he would press Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin about reports that the governor of South Dakota accepted private donations to fund the deployment of National Guard members to the U.S.-Mexico border. When asked about Gov. Kristi Noem’s move, the Washington Democrat said during an interview on MSNBC the Guard should not be treated like a “private militia.” — FEMA changes rules for Covid-19 funeral aid program after outcry: FEMA has changed its pandemic funeral assistance policy to allow family members of those who died from Covid-19 to submit for reimbursement even if the death certificate does not identify the illness as the cause of death. The agency said Tuesday that people with a family member who died between Jan. 20 and May 16, 2020, can apply for aid if they submit a signed letter from a coroner, medical examiner or official who certified their relative’s death certificate that links the death to Covid-19. — New poll shows how Trump surged with women and Hispanics — and lost anyway: A new analysis from the Pew Research Center shows that even as Trump was narrowing Democrats’ margins with white women and Hispanic voters, Biden was surging with other groups, like suburbanites, white men and voters who identified as independents, that propelled him to victory. Pew’s survey of “validated voters” — members of their survey panel whom they could match as people who cast ballots on state voter files — is among the deepest analyses of who voted in the last presidential election and how. — House approves Jan. 6 riot probe as Dems fret over pro-Trump chaos agents: The House voted today, 222-190, to create a select committee with a weighty mandate to dig into the worst attack on the Capitol since the War of 1812. Two Republicans, Reps. Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.), voted alongside every Democrat to establish the 13-member panel.
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| | | | | Nightly asks you: Last summer, before July Fourth, we asked you how the pandemic changed your holiday . After a year of surges, vaccines and variants, we want to know: How are you celebrating July Fourth this year? Is the pandemic still affecting your usual plans? Send us your answers using our form, and we’ll include select responses in our Friday edition.
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| | JOIN FRIDAY FOR A PLAYBOOK INTERVIEW WITH ANITA DUNN: Anita Dunn, a senior White House adviser to President Biden and one of the most influential women in Washington, will join Playbook co-author Ryan Lizza to discuss the administration’s legislative priorities, including getting the massive infrastructure plan through Congress, the latest on efforts to get 70% of U.S. adults vaccinated against Covid, and preparations for the White House’s first big public event on Independence Day. Don’t miss this Playbook Live event, REGISTER HERE. | | | | | | | MORE EUROTRIPS HITTING CALENDARS — The EU is adding 11 countries including Canada to the bloc’s approved travel list, under a decision today by EU ambassadors. The bloc last year halted non-essential travel from non-EU countries due to the coronavirus. The safe travel list, while non-binding, indicates which countries that restriction should be lifted for. Alongside Canada, the ambassadors agreed to add Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brunei, Jordan, Kosovo, Moldova, Montenegro, Qatar and Saudi Arabia to the list. Once again, the U.K. did not make the list amid concerns about the spread of the Delta variant of the coronavirus. Earlier this month, the Council decided travel from six other countries, including the U.S., should be eased.
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| | | HOW TO FIX THE ‘SHECONOMY’ — The pandemic took a disproportionate toll on the women of the world. Restoring prosperity will mean making sure women are not left further behind as the world recovers – and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation today announced a $2.1 billion commitment over five years to help make that happen. “One of the main reasons economies were so fragile in the first place was that women were marginalized. And those economies will never bounce back if their leaders continue to marginalize women,” Melinda French Gates wrote in an introduction to the new initiative. It’s been just over 20 years since the 1995 Beijing Conference on Women declared that “women’s rights are human rights,” but given the disappointing pace of progress on women’s rights around the world, now is a good time to “highlight the importance of a more deliberate focus on a gender inclusive recovery,” Mark Suzman, the CEO of the Gates Foundation, said in an interview with POLITICO’s Joanne Kenen. The pandemic was a great leap backward. As the economy flailed, unemployment for women rose by 9 million in 2020 — and that number is forecast to go up by another 2 million in 2021. Men’s employment, in contrast, is rebounding, according to International Labour Organization data cited by the foundation. Women also continue to bear a disproportionate burden of extra family caregiving responsibilities when schools, day care and elder services close. It was dubbed the “shecession.” Now it’s time for a boom in the “sheconomy.” World leaders opened the three-day Generation Equality Forum today in Paris to address how to make sure women are engines of growth. French Gates, who wants to put “cash, care and data” at women’s disposal, cited a McKinsey report concluding that focusing on women during the global economic recovery would boost global GDP by about $13 trillion — 16 percent — by 2030. And she isn’t just talking about more child care and better family planning and training for service-sector jobs. She means investing in women’s leadership — a stance echoed in a statement by women who have attained prominent perches shaping the world economy — including the managing director of the International Monetary Fund and the presidents of the European Commission and the European Central Bank. They know how to do the math, Suzman noted. “There are trillions — literally trillions — that can be unlocked.”
| | INTO THE GREAT KNOWN UNKNOWN — Matt Latimer , a former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and current co-partner in Javelin, a literary agency and communications firm based in Alexandria, Va., wrote an appreciation of Donald Rumsfeld, who died Tuesday evening, for POLITICO Magazine. Here is an excerpt from “What the World Got Wrong About Donald Rumsfeld”: Donald Rumsfeld fired me once. I had been his chief speechwriter for two years when he was George W. Bush’s secretary of defense and in his retirement we were working together on his memoir. Now that collaboration was ending abruptly. He didn’t enjoy firing me — “stepping back” from each other as he put it — but he delivered the decision in his usual no BS, cards-on-the-table manner. My offense was a book I’d recently written about my experience in the Bush administration that some of its leaders understandably did not exactly savor. Feeling loyal to his former colleagues, Rumsfeld felt he had no choice but to accede to their requests to let me go. It was an awkward and painful parting. But it was also true to form. He remained faithful to the Bush team, even as some of them turned their backs on him. No one, after all, was exactly jumping to his defense as he became the premier target of a barrage of books and publicity critical of the conduct of the Iraq War, as if every senior official on the national security team hadn’t been closely involved in it. The Iraq War? Oh, that was just Rumsfeld and Cheney’s deal. Rumsfeld changed his mind a few days later, after getting the advice and support of his stalwart wife and adviser, Joyce. He told me bluntly that he had made a mistake — that he had made a commitment to me and he was sticking by it. If people didn’t like it, well, “what the hell.” He hoped we could still be friends. We were for the rest of his life, which ended Tuesday evening at the age of 88.
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A message from AARP: Family Caregivers Need Help Now
Caring for loved ones shouldn’t lead to bankruptcy and financial ruin. But that is exactly what is happening for too many family caregivers. The financial strain of caregiving is immense, and it is unacceptable that more isn’t being done to provide support for them. That’s why AARP is fighting for America’s 48 million family caregivers and their loved ones who depend on their care to survive. Family caregivers nationwide spend over one-quarter of their income, on average, providing this essential care. Congress must pass the Credit for Caring Act to help alleviate some of the financial strain of caregiving.
Tell Congress to act now to help protect family caregivers from financial devastation. Tell Congress to pass the Credit for Caring Act. | | | Did someone forward this email to you? Sign up here. | |
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