Since polls opened early this morning, New York City’s primary has been overrun with complaints about irregularities. Most notably, 126,000 people were missing from voter rolls—purged since the fall—including over 60,000 Democratic voters in Brooklyn. The New York Daily News also reports instances of broken voting machines and polling places that hadn’t opened hours after the election had supposedly begun.
In response, NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer has ordered an audit of the city’s elections, saying:
“There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote, yet election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site. 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. With four elections in New York City in 2016 alone, we don’t have a moment to spare.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who said earlier today that voting was “punk rock” while chest bumping a camera, also expressed support for the audit.