As voters headed to their polling stations for the important New York primary on April 19, reports of voter suppression have surfaced, with claims that machines are malfunctioning, polling places were opened later than advertised, and voter’s names didn’t appear or were removed from registration lists.
Early reports by WNYC found that the number of registered Democrats dropped in Brooklyn by 63,558 voters between November 2015 and April 2016. However, new reports say there were 126,000 Brooklyn Democrats were removed from the list of registered voters.
Michael J. Ryan, the executive director of the elections board, told the New York Times that voter rolls would be checked, but that the decline in Brooklyn did not shock him. He said that there were 800,000 registered Democrats in that borough, and that thousands of people were added and removed from the list every year.
