City elections workers are breathing a big sighs of relief. They won’t be expected to count votes by hand in next month’s primaries.

State elections commissioners have tested and finally approved software to electronically tabulate ranked-choice voting results.

They did so unanimously, but begrudgingly, the Democrat co-chair concerned about vote-record security and the Republican commissioners arguing the city didn’t have jurisdiction to enact the new voting method to begin with.

What You Need To Know

  • The state elections commissioners have certified new software for ranked-choice voting, but cited reservations

  • The software will allow the city to quickly run ranked-choice voting runs

  • The city elections board is managing expectations on when results will come, especially with absentee ballot deadlines as a factor

“By no means do I want my vote construed as either supporting or endorsing ranked-choice voting, as I agree with you Commissioner Kosinski, it was not properly implemented in the city,” said commissioner Anthony Casale.

Ranked-choice voting was adopted by voter referendum two years ago.

Four special elections this year have already allowed voters to rank their candidates in order of preference, first to fifth.

Without the software, three races were determined by a manual tally after going into rounds, meaning second- and subsequent-choice votes were counted because no candidate got a majority of first-choice votes.

Now, with the software, the city Board of Elections is working out the details of when the public will learn what results.

“Election Night, we report, as always, unofficial results of early voting and Election Day,” said Miguelina Camilo, secretary of the city board, adding: “Thereafter, once we certify this election, which we will, as quickly as possible, then we will give, upon request, the voter data, the cast-vote records.”

The certification of results, including that for the Democratic primary for mayor, can be expected to take several weeks.

And while we’ll know on June 22 who leads in in-person, first-choice votes, the ultimate victor may change when absentee ballots and second-preferences and so on are factored in.

“State law has a lot of procedures to one, be sure that the voter who sent in the absentee ballot is an eligible voter, and then, it’s got a lot of procedures to be sure that that vote has the best chance of being counted," said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York. "And those are all things that we think are really important to get right. And that takes time.”