The other day, we were going through the final ranked choice results for Council District 25 in Queens — we're weird that way — and noticed that open streets opponent Yi Chen — who had only gotten 17 percent of the vote on Election Day — had somehow pulled into the lead, thanks to racking up more than 47 percent of the absentee ballots in the eight person race.
Sure, Chen ended up losing to open streets supporter Shekar Krishnan when all the ranked-choice votes were tabulated, but once we start crunching numbers, we can't stop.
We made a nice chart (again, we're like that) and sent our findings to the Board of Elections to see if the respected responsible agency was looking into it. No one got back to us before City & State got the story into print first: Apparently there has been a complaint filed against Chen to look into how he ended up more than doubling his total vote count thanks to the absentee ballots.
We'll keep you posted because Chen has been firing up open streets opponents lately, and will likely run again in two years.
In other news:
- Several outlets had a little more details than our breaking story about Antoinette Turrigiano, who was killed by a tow truck driver near Union Square on Wednesday. (NYDN, amNY)
- Half of Fair Fares is no fair at all. (amNY)
- Is it "inappropriate" to ask an Assembly member why she was praising Gov. Cuomo only weeks after calling for his resignation amid his sexual harassment scandal? That's all reporter Jon Campbell wanted to know yesterday — but boy did he get an earful!
- The morning rush is still plagued by way too many signal problems, a new report from Riders Alliance shows. (NY Post)
- Eric Adams and Gov. Cuomo played nice on Wednesday (NY Times, amNY) — and all Curtis Sliwa can do is complain that no one is taking the Republican's campaign very seriously. Well, if the shoe fits ... (NY Post). Gothamist focused on how both Cuomo and Adams — neither of whom is a progressive — now say they are.
- We mentioned the MTA's climate-change-denying plan to widen approach ramps to the Verrazzano Narrows Bridge yesterday, but amNY followed with a story.
- Gothamist and The Village Sun covered the same riotous, anti-outdoor-dining community board meeting as we did a day earlier. And there will be more stories as the city's "open restaurants" program gets a hearing at every community board in town as part of the process to codify the COVID-era restaurant recovery program into permanence.
