Official Tallies Released For Clinton-Obama Primary

Amid fierce criticism of the unofficial vote tallies in the Democratic presidential primary between senators Clinton and Obama, the city's Board of Elections yesterday certified that the New York senator beat her Illinois counterpart by 114,043 votes in New York City.

Mrs. Clinton won 527,941 votes, and Mr. Obama won 413,898 votes.

The board was criticized after unofficial vote tallies undercounted Mr. Obama's performance in New York, showing him winning zero votes in about 80 election districts. The undercount prompted Mayor Bloomberg to allege vote "fraud."

A subsequent investigation by the city's elections board found that Mr. Obama received no votes cast in voting machines in 27 election districts, many of which saw few votes cast on February 5.

A spokeswoman for the board, Valerie Vazquez-Rivera, said an investigation found that inspectors in 35 election districts were responsible for the error showing Mr. Obama winning no votes, and that members of the police department, who help tally the votes on election night, were responsible for the error in 20 election districts.

Results fluctuated between the official and unofficial tallies. In the congressional district of Rep. Gregory Meeks, which Mr. Obama won, official vote tallies showed him winning 43,317 votes and Mrs. Clinton winning 33,908.

Unofficial results showed that Mr. Obama won 39,748 votes and Mrs. Clinton 31,446. The unofficial tallies did not include absentee ballots.

Ms. Vazquez had defended the unofficial vote tally, saying human error, which she said happens all the time, was behind the undercount.