New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is demanding that local officials explain why hundreds of thousands of registered Democrats were removed from the voting rolls during the past year.
The city’s board of elections revealed Tuesday that it dropped 126,000 Brooklyn Democrats from electoral registers since last fall, local radio station WNYC reported.
De Blasio, a Brooklyn Democrat himself, told the station he was "concerned" about the sharp drop of voters in the borough and ordered the elections board to investigate the decline.
"This number surprises me," said de Blasio, "I admit that Brooklyn has had a lot of transient population–that’s obvious. Lot of people moving in, lot of people moving out. That might account for some of it. But I'm confused since so many people have moved in, that the number would move that much in the negative direction."
The findings arrived the same day that New York residents began flocking to the polls to vote in the state’s presidential primary election.
Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan told WNYC that Brooklyn officials were between six months and a year behind on updating the electoral rolls because of the local elections held across the city in November.
"When there is an election event…work stops getting done," Ryan said.
Local officials are only able to remove voters from its electoral lists during designated times of the year, with blackout periods 90 days before federal elections, WNYC noted.
Data from the city’s elections board indicated that 12,000 people moved out of Brooklyn, 44,000 people were reclassified from active to inactive voter status, and 70,000 voters were altogether removed from the inactive list.
An analysis from WNYC found that throughout the entire state, Brooklyn had the greatest drop in active registered Democrats this past year.
The findings are significant because of New York’s rigid rules during primary elections. Voters can only vote for a candidate in the primaries if they are registered to a specific party.
Sen. Bernie Sanders (I, Vt.), who is expected to lose the state Tuesday, argued that the rule has blocked a large chunk of his independent supporters from backing him.
The polls in New York close April 19 at 9 p.m. Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump are projected to win the state for their respective parties.