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| Diane Haslet-Rudiano |
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New York election official is suspended after primary voting issues in Brooklyn due to her 'removing more than 100,000 active voters from registration roll'
Daily Mail
Fri April 22, 2016
Area: New York
A New York City Board of Elections official has been suspended after reports of voters being turned away and polling sites opening late in Brooklyn during Tuesday's presidential primary election.
The Board of Elections office announced that Brooklyn Chief Clerk Diane Haslet-Rudiano has been suspended without pay pending an internal probe into 'the administration of the voter rolls' in Brooklyn.
'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.
Schneiderman's office launched the investigation after a state voter hotline received more than 1,000 complaints from voters.
New York City's Comptroller Scott Stringer said that the largest issue appeared to be that some voters who were eligible were removed from voter-registration roll, while others had their party affiliation changed.
In conducting a normal procedure that prevents the removal of eligible voters during a periodical purge for those who died or moved away, Haslett-Rudiano reportedly skipped a step.
Her error caused roughly eight per cent of Brooklyn's registered voters to be removed.
Over a five month period between October 2015 and April 2016, more than 100,000 active voters were improperly removed from the rolls.
According to the New York Daily News, Brooklyn is the only county in the state that lost voters in that time period.
Other problems included some polling sites were not opened in time for voting, training of poll workers and incorrect primary notifications were mailed out, WABC reported.
Stringer has also called for a full audit of the City Board of Elections' entire processes before polls had even closed.
In a statement, the Board of Elections office said it will 'fully cooperate with the investigations currently being conducted by the Office of the New York State Attorney General and The Office of the New York City Comptroller.'
Former first lady Hillary Clinton won the Democratic primary against Sen. Bernie Sanders.
He said that he was 'concerned about the conduct of the voting process in New York.'
A top Clinton campaign official, John Podesta, said on Twitter that 'Every eligible voter has the right to have their vote counted.'
Haslett-Rudiano earned $125,758 last year, as she has worked at the Board of Elections since 1999.
This isn't her first controversy, as the Daily News reported that in 2013 she let her 123 year old Upper West Side brownstone fall into bad shape that the Department of Building issued more than 20 violations.
Haslett-Rudiano bought the property in 1976 for $5,000, but neighbors say that it became a target for vandals and rats.
They reportedly begged her to sell the unoccupied building, but she claimed that she had difficulty doing so because it reminded her of her late husband, the Daily News reported.
'A lot of my husband's dreams are wrapped up in that building,' she told the Daily News in 2013.
Eventually the property sold in 2014 for $6.6million.
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