New York City

NYC Council speaker asks Board of Elections director to resign

November 6, 2018 Associated Press
Fort Hamilton Public Library, one of Bay Ridge's polling places. Eagle photo by Lore Croghan
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New York City Council Speaker Corey Johnson is calling for the resignation of the city’s Board of Elections director amid reports of malfunctioning ballot scanning machines and hours-long lines at some polling stations.

Johnson said in a Tweet that “voting should not be this difficult.”

He called for the resignation of elections director Michael Ryan and “a full top to bottom review of what went wrong today.”

A Board of Elections spokeswoman didn’t immediately respond to inquiries.

Hard numbers on the extent of the city’s problems weren’t immediately available, but voters took to social media to complain about multiple locations where scanners were having trouble reading ballots or had stopped working entirely, leading to severe bottlenecks.

New York’s attorney general says by mid-afternoon it had received 225 complaints about voting problems.

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