Warning of Brooklyn Voter Purge Dates Back Weeks

[hrmjustin]

Brigid Bergin


When WNYC first asked the city Board of Elections on April 17th why there was such a large drop in active Democrats on the rolls — especially in Brooklyn — BOE Executive Director Michael Ryan was stumped.

“I can't speak to precisely what happened in Brooklyn, you know, during this conversation. It's certainly something I can look into and follow up on," Ryan told WNYC.

The next day, Ryan came back with more information: 126-thousand Brooklyn voters had been removed from the active rolls from last fall through April, more than double the initial estimate.

But it turns out, a unit of the City's Campaign Finance Board, which works with the Board of Elections on voter turnout issues, had already been asking about missing voters in early March.

http://www.wnyc.org/story/warning-brooklyn-voter-purge-dates-back-weeks/

[Wilms]

1. Here's a snip from the annual report.

More voters must be allowed to participate in New York’s closed primaries. Our rigidly partisan primary system is the strictest in the nation—New York is the only state that requires voters to affiliate with a party the year before an election in order to participate. This unreasonably early deadline locked out thousands of voters who gave their attention to the presidential election only as it heated up in recent months.

http://www.nyccfb.info/sites/default/files/pressfiles/2016%20Voter%20Assistance%20Annual%20Report_web.pdf