60,000 fewer Democrats in Brooklyn and no clear reason why.

[forest444]

Source: WNYC

As the birthplace of Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, Brooklyn figures into nearly every one of his stump speeches. It’s also where former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has based her national campaign headquarters.

Yet, even as the candidates lavish love on Brooklyn, a WNYC analysis of state voter enrollment statistics found that the number of active registered Democrats dropped there by 63,558 voters between November 2015 and April 2016. That translates into a 7% drop in registered Democrats in the borough. No other borough in New York City nor county in the rest of the state saw such a significant decline in active registered Democrats. In fact, only 7 of the state's 62 counties saw a drop in the number of Democrats. Everywhere else saw the numbers increase.

Despite the precipitous decline, no city or state election official could explain to WNYC why the number had dropped in a borough that’s been a hotbed of campaign activity, and has the highest population in the state, raising the perennial concern that there will be chaos at the polls on Tuesday caused in part by the very agency responsible for overseeing voter registration and election administration: the Board of Elections.

Valerie Vazquez-Diaz, a spokeswoman for the city Board of Elections, said a member of the Board’s Management Information System staff said the drop was the result of shifting some voters from active to inactive status. But even though more than 60,000 people were dropped from the list of active registered Democrats in Brooklyn, there was only an increase of roughly 10,000 inactive voters in the county. That means some 50,000 voters are unaccounted for entirely.

For a voter who believes she or he is a registered Democrat or Republican and does not appear in the poll books, New York City Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan said there is another option. “If for some reason there's a processing error and the person's name does not appear on the book, they can vote by affidavit ballot at the poll site,” said Ryan.

Affidavit, or provisional, ballots are paper and are not put through the scanner. But it still gives a person the ability to vote and those votes are counted.

Read more: http://www.wnyc.org/story/democratic-voter-rolls-drop-more-60000-brooklyn-presidential-primary/

---

For anyone living in New York:

If a voter experiences a problem at their poll site, State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman's office has set up a hotline that will be staffed by attorneys in the office's Civil Rights Bureau. That number is 800-771-7755. Complaints can also be submitted through email at [e-mail] at any time between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. on Tuesday.

Please remember as well that, according to New York City Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan, if your name does not appear on the book, you can vote by affidavit ballot at the poll site.

[840high]

1. kick

[forest444]

2. Thanks.

There have been so many of these big "unexplained" discrepancies in the voter rolls - and wouldn't you know it, they always seem to favor Hillary. Something stinks - and it ain't Hillary's hot sauce.

[Bubzer]

12. Right! And we're not the only ones who think so!

Emergency Voter Suppression Lawsuit Filed In New York
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017358379

The scale of voter suppression and disenfranchisement may be larger than we could have realized.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1280178482

The most likely enabler of Voter-Affiliation-Switching is the integration of new electronic voter
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12511759392

[Divernan]

28. Bill chokes back the laughter at any mention of Hillary's hot sauce

[kadaholo]

3. Pretty Obvious...

60,000 fewer Democrats in Brooklyn and no clear reason why.

Pretty obvious... The reason is Bernie!

GO BERNIE!!! GO NEW YORK!!! THANKS FOR THE SUGGESTIONS, FOREST44!!!

[JoeOtterbein]

4. Wow! Sounds like the anti-Bernie forces are in full gear to stop him in NY!

He must be posed to win tomorrow!

[forest444]

10. Knock wood.

As he - and Ms. Inevitable there - know all too well, tomorrow is crucial if not decisive.

[pnwmom]

14. Hillary is stronger in Brooklyn than he is -- it's not the same place he left 50 years ago.

So if this impacts either campaign, it would likely hurt her more.

[Orrex]

5. Hillary personally murdered and disappeared 60,000 Democrats

What else could possibly explain it?

[forest444]

7. Hackers.

Welcome to the 21st century, my good man.

[Orrex]

8. Evidence?

Welcome to empirical reality, kiddo. Show me the evidence, and I'll consider it. Idle speculation doesn't convince me.

[forest444]

9. Your guess is as good as mine.

But given what we've already seen with the many thousands of voter registrations mysteriously altered in each state database, it's certainly plausible.

[mwooldri]

13. They got bussed to Vermont?

[joshcryer]

30. Heh.

Her reach is unprecedented.

[EndElectoral]

6. Regardless of who you're for, losing 60K votes in the GE is not good news.

[forest444]

11. Absolutely.

You can almost hear Republican wheels whirring and turning. If this is indeed the result of hacking or some such chicanery, it's certainly giving them a lot of ideas for November.

[Phlem]

15. K&R for visibility.

[C Moon]

16. I'm voting for Bernie, but I'm not clear on how the DNC (or whoever), would know...

exactly who to disenfranchise...so that it would benefit Clinton?
This isn't a rhetorical question, it's just not clear to me.

[Helen Borg]

23. Statistically...

Brooklyn folks will vote for Bernie, not Hillary. So, it would make a lot of sense.

[lostnfound]

32. Databases and opensecrets contributions

Candidates work to identify voters that lean for them or against them, so they can get out the vote.
The database in which that was contained was the subject of claims of mutual hacking.
Also if you contribute, it's public information.

There's another thread here mentioning that the NY Democratic Party changes the rules so that voters became inactive after a shorter period of time of inactivity than in the past. I'm wondering if there was a purge from that. That change, in tandem with the fact that some voters voted outside of their district from hurricane Sandy, could have kicked a lot of people off.

I have no opinion about who is doing what. But the possibilities are numerous and the net result is disenfranchisement of my fellow American citizens, which is no laughing matter.

[AzDar]

17. I think I've seen this play before... don't like how it ends.

[Cheese Sandwich]

18. Looks like a purge.

[Ford_Prefect]

20. More like a Putsch. Maybe the party leadership eliminates progressives by any convenient means.

Or maybe some element of the opposition is cooking the books to get the candidate they want most to run against. Or maybe the Dark Side of Government has taken a hand to help elect the candidate they would rather work with, Or someone else with similar agenda. The enabler is one answer that will be hard to pin point. The process is relatively easy.

In this case and others too very like it they have hacked into the process, or provided a tool to alter the database. That would not be a complicated task. Altering votes while the election is in progress is much more complicated. All we are talking about is bumping a relative few of just the right voters from one registry class to another in a records system that is quite weak on protections. Even easier if you have several months to do it in and no one is looking for it. It could have been done in a normal software update patching process or even hidden in server maintenance procedures. All it takes is the right kind of worm and not only do you get the altered records, but you leave no traces of how it was done or when.

[reddread]

21. voter list hacking?

shouldnt these shenanigans be attributed to the Sanders camp?
I heard they were hackers and deeply penetrated Clinton campaign voter lists.
Possibly from private servers.

Im pretty sure its Sanders using that information to reclassify potential voters.
sneaky guy.
he should have dropped out when they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar right then!
or tomorrow.

[Ford_Prefect]

22. Your perspicacity is exceeded only by your sense of sarcasm.

[Helen Borg]

24. No question the Clinton camp got hold of Bernie's lists.

Given who had access to those data and given where their loyalties are

[dchill]

19. K&R.

[Vermudgeon]

25. This is Nation-wide

Wanna get really scared? Listen to these mathematicians who have followed election engineering, especially in the Midwest (Ohio, Wisconsin...). We need to make paper ballots nation-wide, as they advocate. These machines are private property, with outdated, proprietary technology. Easy pickins. And now we get it in NY by the Dems. Nixon lives. We fight on.

http://greenpowerwellnessshow.podbean.com/e/solartopia-green-power-and-wellness-hour-%e2%80%93-032416/

[scottie10]

27. Absolutely

Paper ballots only.

[snooper2]

33. It is HUGH!

[Cobalt Violet]

26. Once a cheater, always a cheater.

[randome]

29. Maybe they caught 'Independent fever' and switched their allegiance.

It's strange how Independents think they should be allowed to vote in every other party's primary. They are ultra-super-delegates, in their minds!
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

[FlaGranny]

31. They certainly have

the last word in the national elections though, don't they?

[randome]

36. Because it's easier to cast a vote than it is to actually commit to a party.

Democratic party, Republican party, whatever. If anything good comes out of this tussle between Democrats and Independents, I hope it's a drop in the number of Independents, hopefully because they see value in actually having to work to get issues addressed.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]

[Bluenorthwest]

34. The Mayor has reason to express concern, NY has low voter participation Statewide but in NYC it is

abysmal and elections for mayor are no exception to that low turnout. As few as 11% of NYC Democrats manage to vote in some elections. As a Party we have far larger issues in NY than being concerned that people want to become Democrats, we have plenty of Democrats now who just don't vote.
It's not good.

[randome]

35. deBlasio is definitely justified in finding out what happened.

It's bad enough that Independents don't want to commit to anything, but actual Democrats not even bothering to vote? That's a more pressing problem needing to be addressed, imo.
[hr][font color="blue"][center]Birds are territorial creatures.
The lyrics to the songbird's melodious trill go something like this:
"Stay out of my territory or I'll PECK YOUR GODDAMNED EYES OUT!"[/center][/font][hr]