Forged signatures listed on New York City mayor’s re-election campaign petition – report | New York

More than 50 signatures on the petition of the mayor of New York, Eric Adams, to present himself as an independent candidate in the November elections are fraudulent, according to a report published on Friday.

The Gothamist said that he had found 52 signatures of people who said that their names had been forged, including signatures from three people who have proven to be dead. The publication cited other people who declared that they were deceived in the signing of petitions.

The discovery, if confirmed, is likely to be insignificant for the independent campaign of Adams, which is necessary to produce 7,500 signatures to qualify it as a candidate. The Adams campaign has transformed nearly 50,000 signatures.

However, the observation adds complexity to a race to direct the largest city in the country which opposes the outgoing mayor against the candidate of the Democratic Party Zohran Mamdani, the former governor of New York Andrew Cuomo, the republican candidate Curtis Sliwa and the former prosecutor Jim Walden.

Cuomo and Walden, like Adams, work like self -employed.

The defects of the petition system to access the ballot are likely to be tested in the future, because candidates are looking for ways to bypass the primary system of classified choice, depending on the publication.

Applicants generally employ external entrepreneurs to collect signatures. In the case of Adams petition operation, the irregularities were allocated to at least nine workers who have submitted more than 5,000 signatures together.

A single campaign worker has collected more than 700 signatures in a single day, said the point of sale, adding that some seemed to be submitted in a surprisingly similar handwriting among many residents in a single building. “

Adam’s campaign did not immediately respond to the request for comments. But earlier, he had told the Gothamist that he expected that the companies he was engaging in order to follow the law, and she would carry out his own signatures.

An Adams lawyer said that the mayor had not ordered anyone to break the law and that his campaign “would determine if corrective measures were justified”.

Veteran lawyer for electoral law Jerry Goldfeder told the publication that it was not uncommon for the invalid signatures to be collected.

“From time to time, someone is trying to cut the corners, and they are generally captured and sometimes these cases are returned to the district prosecutor or the American lawyer, and there are prosecution,” said Goldfeder.

The report occurs in the middle of increased tensions in the city after an armed man killed four people in an office building in Midtown on Monday, including the New York police officer outside the city, Didarul Islam, the management of Blackstone Wesley Lepatner, the security guard Aland Etienne and the director of property Julia Hyman.

The Adams Administration urged New Yorkers to ask for help and support from mental health services if they find themselves in difficulty following the attack, while Mamdani returns after the City Police review, saying that his previous calls to finance the force were “out of step” with his current reflection.

“I am not finance the police,” said Mamdani on Wednesday. “I do not run to finance the police.

“I run as a candidate who is not fixed in time, the one who learns and the one who leads, and part of this means admitting as I grew up. And that means focusing on people who deserve to be spoken. ”

The election of the mayor of New York is scheduled for November 4.