NYC Board of Elections Admits To Illegal Voter Purge: Report

NEW YORK CITY — The New York City Board of Elections admitted Tuesday that it broke federal and state laws by kicking thousands of people off city voter rolls ahead of last spring's primary elections, WNYC reported.

The board has reached a settlement in a lawsuit in which it promises to prevent future purges and to restore affected voters' rights, according to Tuesday's WYNC story. Several individual voters and a good-government group sued the board last year arguing that it improperly stripped voters across the city, including 117,000 in Brooklyn, of their right to vote in the April 2016 presidential primary.

Under the settlement, which hasn't been approved by a judge, the Board of Elections must submit a plan within 90 days showing how it will fix its voter rolls, WNYC reported. It must also set up a process to review complaints from voters about their registration status and review all voters who were removed from the rolls starting in July 2013, the story says.

"I see their willingness to grapple with this problem as a significant step forward," Susan Lerner, executive director of the watchdog group Common Cause, which brought the lawsuit, told WNYC.

(For more on this and other neighborhood stories, subscribe to Patch to receive daily newsletters and breaking news alerts.)

The settlement also forces the Board of Elections to submit monthly and yearly reports and subjects it to two outside audits each year to check its progress, WNYC reported. The public radio station broke the news of the purge last year just days before the April 19, 2016 primary vote.

"We're requiring them to fully overhaul their procedures—and we'll be closely monitoring," state Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who joined the lawsuit, tweeted on Tuesday.

The Board of Elections declined to comment to WNYC on an agreement that's still awaiting court approval.

See WNYC's full report at here.

(Lead image by Janie Osborne/Getty Images)