NYC Mayor: The Yang Campaign Knows Who Voted Early And The Board Of Elections Says You Can, Too

[brooklynite]

Gothamist

As candidates for mayor criss-cross New York City in their final sprint to Primary Day, voter data is king, allowing campaigns to sharpen their strategy and target their spending on still-open votes. That’s why staffers on several mayoral campaigns were perplexed when one campaign was touting its analysis of never before released early-voter data.

The unequal access to information was inadvertently exposed in a couple of tweets from mayoral candidate Andrew Yang’s pollster who shared his analysis of early-voter turnout last Monday. Until then, current and former campaign staffers told Gothamist/WNYC that the New York City Board of Elections had not consistently released early voting turnout information, and that only after being outed on Twitter did the board share the information with other campaigns.

The BOE routinely comes under heightened scrutiny around elections over concerns about the inherently political composition of the Board and whether insiders are given more access. While BOE officials insisted this early-voting turnout data was public, available to anyone who asked, it became clear this week that the Board has not established a clear and consistent policy for sharing early-voter information and communicating to the public about it.

“There needs to be democratic access to this information in a timely manner that is transparent and accessible,” said Tyrone Stevens, a spokesman for Scott Stringer, the city comptroller and candidate for mayor.

The confusion began last Monday when Evan Roth Smith, the pollster for Yang’s campaign, sought to downplay Yang’s sinking poll numbers by sharing his analysis of early voting so far in a series of since-deleted tweets.

[WarGamer]

1. I like Yang a lot...

He's a modern 21st Century progressive...

I wish he was doing better in the race.