(Bloomberg) -- New York City elections officials warned voters that it would be at least a week after the June 22 Democratic mayoral primary until the winner is known.

About 50,000 people have gone to the polls since early voting began June 12, but many voters remain puzzled over a ranked-choice voting system that asks residents to select their top five candidates, rather than choose just one. Mayoral candidates will meet Wednesday for the final televised Democratic debate before the primary.

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Last Debate

The eight leading Democrats are due to appear Wednesday night in the third televised debate. The in-person debate, from 7-9 p.m. on NBC, will be the candidates’ last chance to make their pitch to voters and try to stand out in what remains a crowded pack.

After months of campaigning and millions of dollars spent, there’s no clear frontrunner. While four contenders have traded top spots in recent polls -- Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, former city Sanitation Commissioner Kathryn Garcia, former presidential contender Andrew Yang and civil-rights lawyer Maya Wiley -- the data has been inconsistent and the race remains fluid. The introduction to ranked-choice voting also complicates trying to handicap the race.

Ahead of the debate, many of the candidates are hosting rallies throughout the city to get out the vote and encourage residents to tune in. -- Shelly Banjo

Counting Delays

The New York City Board of Elections said results of first-choice votes for early voting will be provided in the hour after the polls close at 9 p.m., but “unfortunately we will not be able to do any sort of calculation of the ranked-choice voting until at least a week afterward,” board chairman Frederic Umane said at a Tuesday meeting.

”Understand that it’s a longer process than people are used to, and we are going to do the best we can to provide information when we can, as we get it,” he said.

Umane said that the election board wasn’t able to run the ranked-choice algorithm from the initial information garnered on election night, and will have to wait until all the scanners are returned to the voting machines. Then, the board plans to run the data weekly, and announce on Tuesdays, adding in affidavit, absentee and mail-in ballots thereafter as they come in, he said. -- Gregory Korte

Absentee Votes

Tuesday was the last day to request absentee ballots ahead of the primary. Nearly 211,000 absentee ballots were sent out and more than 52,000 had been returned as of 10 a.m. Tuesday, elections officials said Tuesday at a meeting.

That is equivalent to about 30% of all votes cast in the 2013 Democratic primary won by Mayor Bill de Blasio, when nearly 692,000 New Yorkers voted. Around 18,000 votes were cast through absentee or military ballots in that election, the last competitive mayoral primary, according to the elections board.-- Gregory Korte

Early Voters Puzzled By Ranked-Choice Voting

Early voters making their way to the polls are providing a preliminary look at how residents are responding to a flurry of changes in how people choose their elected officials. This is the first time the city has allowed early voting for a mayor’s race, following a 2019 state voting law change, and around 50,000 people have cast their ballot in the first few days, according to the city’s election board.

New Yorkers are also being hit with a new kind of ballot where voters are asked to rank their top five choices. The system is meant for voters to get more of a say in deciding the ultimate winner, but some voters on Tuesday said they found it confusing.

Jerome Narramore, 50, who voted in lower Manhattan Tuesday, only voted for one candidate and said that if he had been better educated he may have ranked the candidates. “I think it’s very confusing, they didn’t get the messaging out as to how it actually works for everybody to understand what the impact is to a number two candidate versus a number one candidate,” he said.

Other voters embraced the change but weren’t sure how the ranked system would impact the winner of the race. “I don’t know actually if it gives me more of a choice,” said Naomi Daniels, 48, who voted in lower Manhattan on Tuesday. “I don’t fully understand how that all plays out.”

Daniels, who ranked Garcia and Adams first and second, said she “definitely was a bit apprehensive because it seemed so different from the past, but the ballots were clear and I did some reading before and heard some stuff on the radio, so I felt prepared.”

The city spent $15 million on an education campaign around ranked-choice voting. -- Skylar Woodhouse

Read More: Ranked-Choice Voting Gets Its New York City Audition: QuickTake

Wiley Pushes Back On Need for Moderate Leader

Wiley, the progressive favorite, said desegregating schools would be one of her top priorities as mayor.

During a campaign stop on Tuesday, Wiley pledged to end the controversial Specialized High School Admissions Test, increase class sizes, hire 2,500 more public-school teachers and expand on trauma-informed care for kids returning to school in September after a year plagued by pandemic restrictions. “Our kids were traumatized,” she said, noting her own traumatic experience as a 9-year-old watching her father die in a boating accident.

Wiley said she didn’t think Adams and Garcia were leading in the polls because they offered a more moderate vision to address quality-of-life issues important to voters.

“What I am hearing from voters is frankly very different, it’s one of the reasons why I’m definitely gaining in polls and why progressives have coalesced around this historic run,” she said, noting recent endorsements from lawmakers like U.S. Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. “Rather than going back to the same old ideas that didn’t fix the problem, we’re going to lean hard into the courage to stand up to developers, the courage to confront the bureaucracy and courage, frankly, to confront the NYPD.” -- Shelly Banjo

Garcia Talks Government Experience

Garcia said the election is about who can best use his or her government experience to spur the city’s economic comeback.

“People want government to work for them,” Garcia, 51, said Tuesday during a Bloomberg Television interview. “There’s nothing more progressive than having government work for them.”

Garcia also said she had no second choice among her Democratic competitors in the June 22 primary: “I would not be in this race if I had a strong second choice. I’m running because New York City is in a state of crisis and needs someone who’s ready to roll up their sleeves and just do the work, and that’s what I’ve been doing for the last 14 years.”-- Henry Goldman

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