NYC comptroller to audit Board of Elections amid voter irregularities

New York City comptroller Scott Stringer announced an audit Tuesday of the city’s Board of Elections amid reports that scores of voters have had difficulty accessing the polls or have been wrongly removed from the voter rolls.

“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,” Stringer said in a statement. “With four elections in New York City in 2016 alone, we don’t have a moment to spare.”

{mosads}Voters in New York are casting ballots in the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries on Tuesday, in critical contests for both parties.

Media reports from across the state indicate that some polling stations failed to open on time, leaving voters waiting in line for hours. Other polling places reportedly had faulty or broken polling machines.

In addition, the Comptroller’s office said about 125,000 voters in Brooklyn alone had turned up to cast ballots only to be informed they were never on the voter rolls, had been removed from the voter rolls or were registered under a different party.

In a letter to Board of Elections director Michael Ryan, Stringer asked for information on polling site operations, voter communication processes, poll worker training and “voter disenfranchisement” related to the voter rolls.

“As a result of  today’s reported irregularities, my office will be auditing the management and operations of the Board of Elections in order to identify the failings and make recommendations to improve performance going forward,” Stringer wrote.

GOP front-runner Donald Trump is favored to win the Republican presidential primary in New York in a landslide Tuesday. 

Democratic front-runner Hillary Clinton is also expected to win, although her rival, Bernie Sanders, has sought to make an issue out of some of his supporters being unable to vote.

Sanders has relied heavily on young and independent voters, many of whom may have missed last October’s deadline to register as a Democrat or to vote for the first time.