Frustrated Brooklyn Voters Beg Judges "Nonstop" To Let Them Vote

"I never had this problem in all my years of voting, and I'm a consistent voter."

It was the afternoon of Primary Day, and Thomas Williams* was in a carpeted back hallway of the Brooklyn Board of Elections Office holding a court order to show poll workers later in the evening, telling them he should be allowed to vote. Moments earlier, Williams had sat in a plastic chair in a stuffy, carpeted office, across a steel desk from Brooklyn Supreme Court Judge Wavny Toussaint, surrounded by court and Elections personnel, explaining his situation. Sometime this year, the agency sent a piece of mail to Williams to confirm his Flatbush address, but left off his apartment number. When the postal service returned the notice as undeliverable, someone at the Board changed Williams's registration to inactive, meaning his name would not appear on the list at his poll site.

Toussaint considered these facts for about five minutes, then agreed that he should be allowed to vote. Williams returned to work, behind a desk on the same floor.
Williams is a seasonal Board of Elections worker himself, but not even his knowledge of the system could protect him from the irregularities that affected so many New York voters ahead of this year's primary, particularly in Kings County.

126,000 Brooklyn Democrats were removed from the active voter rolls since last November, 44,000, like Williams, rendered inactive, 70,000 more purged entirely, and 12,000 because voters were listed as having left the borough. In the back hallway and lobby of the city Elections Board's Downtown Brooklyn office, 15-20 would-be voters at a time waited 30 minutes to an hour and a half for their cases to be heard.

"It's nonstop. It might be worse than '08," one worker said to another during a down moment between hearings."


http://gothamist.com/2016/04/19/brooklyn_boe_court.php