Fed Officials Force Board of Elections to Address Voting Rights Questions

Federal lawmakers are demanding to know if the Brooklyn voter purge before last month's primary election could have been prevented.

At a town hall meeting Friday in her lower Manhattan district, Rep. Nydia Velazquez teamed up with Rep. Grace Meng of Queens and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries of Brooklyn and Queens to press the city Board of Elections for answers — particularly on the question of whether the purge could have been prevented by a section of the Voting Rights Act that was recently struck down.

Three years ago, the Supreme Court ruled that Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act was unconstitutional. It required certain places, including New York City, to seek pre-clearance, or approval from the Justice Department, before making any changes to their voting laws or practices. 

When Velazquez asked the Board of Elections' Michael Ryan whether that former law would have prevented the purge, he pivoted.

“There was clear employee error on a misinterpretation of the law,” said Ryan. He added that the Board was taking steps to ensure the mistakes wouldn’t be repeated.

But Esmeralda Simmons, executive director of Center for Law and Social Justice at Medgar Evers College, argued that if the law was still in place, the purge would not have happened.

“Before, typically, if a Board of Election official, particularly a deputy director in a borough, wanted to do something that was different from how things were done before, they would bring it to their counsel's office and the counsel's office would say, 'Oh, we gotta get pre-clearance.' And it would have been caught,” said Simmons. “Nobody can just take it upon themselves and change how elections are run.”

Even without Section 5, Jeffries said he hasn't ruled out calling for a federal investigation. “I think many of us would be prepared to ask the Department of Justice to look into what occurred here in New York City beyond the investigations that are taking place at the city and state level,” he said.

There is state legislation still in committee that would require a New York State pre-clearance provision.