126,000 Brooklyn Democrats Reportedly Dropped From Active NY Voter List

See also: Multiple Brooklyn Polling Sites Opened Hours Late Tuesday Morning, Voters Say

BROOKLYN, NY — A troubling study conducted by local news station WNYC has found Brooklyn lost nearly 126,000 active, registered Democrats between the election last November and this April's presidential primary.

The decline in Kings County Democrats marked the largest of its kind in any New York county, according to WNYC.

The 126,000 figure "includes 12,000 people who moved out of the borough, 44,000 people who were moved from active to inactive voter status and 70,000 voters removed from the inactive voter list," WYNC reported Tuesday.

Responding to the data, NYC Board of Elections (BOE) Executive Director Michael Ryan tried to explain Brooklyn's sharp drop in Democrats to multiple news outlets. He said BOE staffers had been long overdue to update the city's voting lists — which fluctuate based on voters moving in and out of the borough, and based on their participation record in recent elections — and did a major cleaning since last fall.

"Brooklyn was a little behind with their list maintenance tasks,” Ryan told WNYC.

And here's what Ryan told the New York Post:

Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan said the mystery is easily explained: Because of retirements and staff illness, the voting list was not properly maintained in Brooklyn for six to eight months.

When staffers caught up with the backlog, he said, they purged voters who should have been removed earlier last year.

According to the Post, voters on the "inactive" list of Brooklyn Democrats can still cast a ballot in the primaries if they haven't moved out of NYC.

However, the Post reported, "the 'missing' voters are out of luck — their names have been stricken from the records."

If you're still a little sketched out, you're not alone. Mayor Bill de Blasio has said he's "confused" by the numbers, and has called for an investigation.

New York City Councilman Brad Lander, too, called the purge “weird” and “troubling" in an interview with the Post.

Photo by Kelley Minars