New York Times: Glitch Reveals Ballot Choices of N.Y.C. Voters, Including Mayor’s Son

When a well-known 20-something New Yorker cast his Democratic primary ballot in June, he had every reason to assume that no one would know his choice for mayor — a point of interest for many, since his father was the current mayor.

As it turns out, Dante de Blasio, the son of Mayor Bill de Blasio, was not afforded that privacy.

In a report released Monday by the Stevens Institute of Technology and Princeton University’s Electoral Innovation Lab, researchers said that missteps by the New York City Board of Elections had inadvertently allowed the lab to determine the votes of 378 New Yorkers in the mayoral primary. Those voters include the mayor’s son and a former New York City deputy mayor, Robert K. Steel. …

The researchers were able to identify the voting records of the individual New York City voters by cross-referencing the New York State voter file — a list of every registered voter, whether they voted and their address — with the board’s cast-vote records, which contained hundreds of voting precincts where just one ballot was cast. …

Good government groups took comfort in the limited nature of the problem.

Roughly one million New York City residents voted in the June primary, and only 378 votes were revealed.

“This is a minimal problem,” said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause/New York. “This is a very very small fraction of the total number of voters. And they’re absolutely right, it’s easy to solve this problem.”