NYC Comptroller Orders Audit After Voting Issues

The city’s comptroller has ordered an audit of its Board of Elections after reports that some voters were turned away from polling sites during the state’s presidential primary.

Comptroller Scott Stringer said his office had received complaints that some people couldn’t vote and others had to deal with polling locations that opened late or had malfunctioning ballot scanners.

“The people of New York City have lost confidence that the Board of Elections can effectively administer elections, and we intend to find out why the BOE is so consistently disorganized, chaotic and inefficient,” he said.

Stringer also questioned the fairness of a board process to cancel the registrations of people who haven’t voted in recent elections and didn’t respond to notices.

Between Nov. 1 and April 1, the number of registered voters was trimmed by 1.4 percent, from 3.58 million to 3.53 million. Much of that decline occurred in Brooklyn, where the number fell by 64,000.

The city Board of Elections’ executive director, Michael Ryan, dismissed the issues Tuesday, saying the purging was part of a routine review of voter records and was in response to a scathing report that was issued in 2013 accusing the agency of failing to maintain updated voter logs.

This article appeared in print on page 5 of the April 21st, 2016 edition of Hamodia.