Top New York City elections official suspended after voter mishap

NEW YORK, April 22 (UPI) -- The head of New York City's board of elections in Brooklyn was suspended without pay after some 100,000 voter registrations were purged ahead of the New York primary on Tuesday.

Diane Haslett-Rudiano, who has worked for the board of elections since 1999, will remain suspended pending an internal investigation into the "administration of the voter rolls in the Borough of Brooklyn," officials said. She earned $125,758 last year.

"The board 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," officials said.

New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman, who opened an investigation into the board of elections on Wednesday, issued a statement following Haslett-Rudiano's suspension.

"The administration of the voter rolls in Brooklyn is of major concern to our office and is a focus of our investigation," Schneiderman said.

Earlier this week, New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer questioned why voter registration rolls in Brooklyn fell by about 100,000 names since November 2015. During the same period, about 63,000 names were added. While thousands of names are added and deleted every year, Brooklyn elections workers could not explain the net decrease of about 62,000 voters between November and April, Stringer said.

"There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote, yet election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site," Stringer, a Democrat, said.

Other problems at the polling places included voter sites not opening on time and poorly trained elections workers.