Over 1.6 million Voters Purged in New York State
Bo Lipari, Executive Director, New Yorkers for Verified Voting, writes on his blog today that over 1.5 million voters were purged in New York State:
But a question has remained, how many voter records have been purged from New York State’s voter rolls? Now we have an answer. I submitted a Freedom of Information Law request for all records in New York’s NYSVOTER voter registration database. Early in October, I received a copy of NYSVOTER records from September 23, 2008. I wrote a program to analyze the 12,010,045 voter records and can now report the number of voters who have had their status set to “Purged” or “Inactive” in the Empire state, and the reasons given for the change.
The data reveals that New York State has moved 1,661,244, or almost 14% of the voter records, from “Active” status to “Purged” or “Inactive”, meaning they will not be in the poll books on Election Day. Whether or not these changes are valid is anybody’s guess, and there’s no way to know for sure how many of these have been incorrectly removed from “Active” status. But I’ll wager that a significant number of these records are actually legally registered voters who should be allowed to vote on Election Day, but won’t be.
WHAT YOU CAN DO: If you live in New York State, you can check your registration online at https://voterlookup.elections.state.ny.us/votersearch.aspx. If you’d rather call, you can find the number of your county election commission here or call information and ask for the number of your county’s election commission.
You know, as I am writing this I am realizing that the word to check your registration will spread fairly easily among people who have access to the internet, but what about the people who don’t? Does anyone in New York have any ideas on how to get the word out to people without computers and internet access?
October 21st, 2008 at 9:30 am
[…] For my NY readers - urgent October 21, 2008, 10:30 am Filed under: Uncategorized 1.6 million New York voters have been removed from the voting rolls — nearly 14% of the NY registered. Are you one of […]