Multiple Brooklyn Polling Sites Opened Late Tuesday -- and Left Some Regulars Off Rolls

Screenshot via Angel Desgouttes/Twitter

UPDATE, 8 p.m.: The Mayor, the Comptroller and the Brooklyn Borough President are calling for a full-on audit into the NYC Board of Elections after a "chaotic" day at the polls.

BROOKLYN, NY — Voters trying to cast their presidential primary ballots early Tuesday morning in at least three different polling sites across Brooklyn reported online that the locations opened one to two hours late — causing other frustrated voters to give up and leave for work.

The NYC Board of Elections (BOE) promised New Yorkers they'd be able to vote between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. Tuesday.

Late-to-open polling sites reportedly included Atlantic Terminal in Fort Greene; Public School 332 in Brownsville; and the Cooper Houses in East Williamsburg.

Worse still, at the Public School 11 voting center in Clinton Hill, poll workers told DNAinfo that at least seven regular voters who live on Lafayette Avenue — perhaps even an entire block's worth — didn't show up on their local roll and had to cast their vote by filling out an affidavit.

A Clinton Hill poll worker who wanted to remain anonymous told the news site:

"Over the course of the day we had quite a few residents of the Lafayette Avenue area who came looking to vote and for some reason their addresses were omitted from the voter registration lists. They were pretty active voters, so it was pretty disappointing for them during a key time and a key period to not be able to officially cast their vote in a machine today.”

Similar reports of missing voter names were popping up all over NYC by Tuesday afternoon — in Windsor Terrace, Williamsburg, the Upper West Side and beyond.

This doesn't look good for BOE officials, who've been fielding suspicions over a staggering 163,000-person drop in active Brooklyn Democrats since last fall.

"We are deeply disturbed by what we’re hearing from polling places across the state," Karthik Ganapathy, a spokesman for Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders, told Patch in a statement Tuesday.

"From long lines and dramatic understaffing to longtime voters being forced to cast affidavit ballots and thousands of registered New Yorkers being dropped from the rolls, what’s happening today is a disgrace," Ganapathy said. "We need to be making it easier for people to vote, not inventing arbitrary obstacles — and today’s shameful demonstration must underline the urgent importance of fixing voting laws across the country."

Public School 137 in Lower Manhattan also opened more than an hour late, according to Twitter user @_uhzel.

In addition, @lionorder12 said electronic ballot scanners weren't working at Public School 37 in Jamaica, Queens. "Not cool. I want my vote counted properly," the person said.

"It's discouraging, because this is what makes people wanna just leave," wrote Brownsville resident Angel Desgoutes, who recorded video of her two-hour wait. (Included below.)

Desgoutes told us she watched at least 10 people leave after being told they had to wait.

Like many of the other New Yorkers reporting local polling malfunctions Tuesday morning, Desgoutes is a Bernie Sanders supporter. She urged her Twitter followers to call the city at 1 (866) VOTE-NYC if they had any issues — either that, or hit up the hotline Sanders set up in New York, as he has in previous state primaries, to deal specifically with these kinds of shenanigans: (347) 379-4298.

Patch reached out repeatedly Tuesday morning to the BOE for verification of the above reports and more information on what they could mean for election results. Check back for updates.

We'd also be happy to add your story to the day's growing list of (alleged) polling malfunctions, so reach out if you've got one: simone.wilson@patch.com.