Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

100,000 New Yorkers receive flawed absentee ballots

100,000 New Yorkers receive flawed absentee ballots
Noam Galai/Getty Images

Nearly 100,000 New York City voters were mailed general election ballots with incorrect names and return addresses.

The defective absentee ballots were first reported on Monday, and the following day the New York City Board of Elections confirmed the problem affected 99,477 voters in Brooklyn who had requested one. New ballots with correct information will be printed and sent immediately to those voters.

With just 34 days until voting ends Nov. 3, this kind of critical error could sow confusion and distrust in an election already flooded with attacks — mostly prominently from President Trump — on mail voting.


In New York, absentee voters must place their completed ballot in a return, or "oath," envelope that includes the person's name, address and voter ID. After signing the oath envelope, the voter places it in a second envelope to be mailed back to election officials. But for those 100,000 voters in Brooklyn, the wrong identification information was printed on their oath envelopes.

The elections board blamed the error on the printing company, Phoenix Graphics, which had been contracted to print and mail ballots for Brooklyn and Queens — although the issue appears to be confined to Brooklyn. The company has been ordered to resend ballots with the correct information and a notice explaining the error.

Michael Ryan, executive director of the elections board, said in a meeting Tuesday afternoon that the board will "do everything that it needs to do administratively both in communication with the voters on the upfront on the re-mailing aspect and on the back end to ensure that all of the ballots received are appropriately processed and the votes that are tallied are properly credited to the voters who have participated in the process."

The board tweeted Tuesday night that voters who had received incorrect ballots should direct message, email or call the board.

In August, New York added fear of coronavirus infection as a valid excuse for voting absentee this fall, joining 11 other states that have temporarily extended mail voting eligibility to all voters. The board reported that 520,000 voters across the city had requested absentee ballots.

This is not the first election problem to arise in the Big Apple this year. In the June primary, when all voters were sent an absentee ballot application, election officials were inundated with mail ballots and results took more than a month to finalize.

Tens of thousands of primary ballots were also disqualified due to small errors, such as a missing signature or an improperly sealed envelope. New York officials have since made changes to give voters an opportunity to address these issues and "cure" their mailed ballots.

During the first presidential debate Tuesday night, Trump again argued against mail-in voting because it could delay election results. "We might not know for months because these ballots are going to be all over," he said.

The president also used the moment as an opportunity to assert another false claim that voting by mail leads to widespread fraud, pointing to Manhattan as an example due to the high rejection rate of mail ballots in the primary.

Read More

MAGA says no to Trump & Kennedy’s junk science

U.S. President Donald Trump answers questions after making an announcement on“ significant medical and scientific findings for America’ s children” in the Roosevelt Room of the White House on Sept. 22, 2025, in Washington, D.C. Federal health officials suggested a link between the use of acetaminophen during pregnancy as a risk for autism, although many health...

(Getty Images)

MAGA says no to Trump & Kennedy’s junk science

President Trump stood at the White House podium, addressing a room full of reporters.

“First, effective immediately, the FDA will be notifying physicians that the use of…ah-said-a…well…let’s see how we say that.”

Keep ReadingShow less
On Live Facial Recognition in the City: We Are Not Guinea Pigs, and We Are Not Disposable

New Orleans fights a facial recognition ordinance as residents warn of privacy risks, mass surveillance, and threats to immigrant communities.

Getty Images, PhanuwatNandee

On Live Facial Recognition in the City: We Are Not Guinea Pigs, and We Are Not Disposable

Every day, I ride my bike down my block in Milan, a tight-knit residential neighborhood in central New Orleans. And every day, a surveillance camera follows me down the block.

Despite the rosy rhetoric of pro-surveillance politicians and facial recognition vendors, that camera doesn’t make me safer. In fact, it puts everyone in New Orleans at risk.

Keep ReadingShow less
An illustration of two people holding legal documents.
llustration by Olivia Abeyta for palabra

Proof of Citizenship, No Proof of Safety

Claudia, an immigrant from Chile who lives in suburban Maryland right outside Washington, D.C., watched closely as the Trump administration ramped up its mass deportation campaign during the spring (Claudia, not her real name, asked to be identified by a pseudonym because she is afraid of federal immigration agents).

She went online and watched countless videos of masked, heavily armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents breaking the car windows of immigrants to wrestle them out of their cars, and detaining people at their workplaces, like restaurants, car washes, and agricultural fields. Many of her friends told her about ICE sweeps in heavily Latino apartment complexes near her home.

Keep ReadingShow less
Protest sign, We the people.
Protests have been sparked across the country over the last few weeks.
Gene Gallin on Unsplash

Why Constitution Day Should Spark a Movement for a New Convention in 2037

Sept. 17 marked Constitution Day, grounded in a federal law commemorating the signing of the U.S. Constitution on Sept. 17, 1787. As explained by the courts of Maryland, “By law, all educational institutions receiving federal funding must observe Constitution Day. It is an opportunity to celebrate and discuss our Constitution and system of government.”

This week also marked the release of an important new book by the historian Jill Lepore: “We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution” (as reviewed in the New York Times in a public link). Here’s an overview of her conclusions from the publisher:

Keep ReadingShow less