The New York Post reported last week that the birth date of a 73-year-old voter who has been living and voting in The Bronx since the 1970s was recorded as Jan. 1, 1850 on official voting records. The revelation led the Board of Elections officials to review their files and discover something curious — "another 849 New Yorkers who were supposedly alive when Abe Lincoln was president."
Board officials say that these 850 supposed centenarians are the result of a glitch that happened because of a "leftover vestige from a bygone age." New York City residents weren't always required to provide their exact birthdays when registering to vote. Because voting records are open to the public, some new voters (mostly women) "simply wrote that they were '21+.'"
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