http://patch.com/new-york/bellmore/s/fpmt9/city-suspends-top-brooklyn-election-officialBROOKLYN, NY — The city's Board of Elections (BOE) has suspended its clerk in charge of all voting activity in the Brooklyn borough, just two days after a presidential primary marked by widespread reports of problems at the polls.
Diane Haslett-Rudiano was suspended without pay "pending an internal investigation into the administration of the voter rolls in the Borough of Brooklyn," according to a statement released Thursday by BOE spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez-Diaz.
The statement said the BOE will "fully cooperate" with dual investigations into its work being conducted by State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and NYC Comptroller Scott Stringer.
According to a WNYC analysis, 126,000 names were dropped from Brooklyn's list of registered Democrats in the months leading up to the election, even though the heavily Democratic borough is growing in population.
Citing an unnamed source, the Daily News reported that Haslett-Rudiano's staffers made a critical mistake while eliminating outdated voter registrations from their system, resulting in improper purges.
Vazquez-Diaz declined to comment on the report.
At one polling location Patch visited Tuesday night in Clinton Hill, three voting districts (out of five) had together racked up more than 100 affidavit ballots cast by voters who couldn't find their names on the rolls. The cause of this issue wasn't immediately clear.
Elsewhere in the borough Tuesday, voters reported polling places that opened late or didn't have working equipment.
On Tuesday, BOE Executive Director Michael Ryan defended his agency's work, saying: "Democracy not merely survived today in the City of New York — it thrived."
According to the BOE's unofficial vote tallies, 924,330 city Democrats cast ballots in Tuesday's presidential primary, in addition to 108,466 Republicans.
