A top New York City Board of Elections official was suspended Thursday after voters filed thousands of complaints on primary day.
The board’s executive committee said in a statement that Diane Haslett-Rudiano, the chief clerk in Brooklyn, had been suspended without pay pending an internal investigation.
According to the city’s records, the names of some 126,000 Brooklyn voters were removed from the rolls ahead of Tuesday’s primary contest. Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan told CNN that of that total, 12,000 had moved out of the borough, 44,000 were listed as inactive after mailings to their homes bounced back, and 70,000 were removed after failing to vote in two successive federal elections.
New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer noted that other voter complaints included shuttered polling stations and conflicting information about voting times.
Both Stringer and state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman have opened audits of New York City’s Board of Elections over reported “irregularities.”
“The administration of the voter rolls in Brooklyn is of major concern to our office and is a focus of our investigation,” New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said in a statement.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio (D) has voiced support for Stringer’s audit.
“The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed,” de Blasio said in a statement on Tuesday.
The Board of Elections said in their statement that they will “fully cooperate” with both investigations.
