Bernie Sanders loses his birth borough of Brooklyn, cites 'purged' voter rolls

Sen. Bernie Sanders may have been born in Brooklyn, but his borough of birth voted for Hillary Clinton in Tuesday's Democratic primary. With 86 percent of the vote counted in Kings County, which is Brooklyn, Clinton leads Sanders 60 percent to 40 percent, a similar margin to Clinton's statewide lead. According to The New York Times' neighborhood-by-neighborhood voting map, Sanders appears to be doing best in southwestern Brooklyn, neighborhoods like Bensonhurst and Bay Ridge, and in the northern neighborhoods of Bushwick and Greenpoint. Nearby Williamsburg, is more Clinton territory than Sanders, according to incomplete results, and Sanders' old neighborhood, Flatbush, is divided.

Sanders, speaking in Pennsylvania before results were announced, pointed to the mess at the polls. "It is absurd that in Brooklyn, New York, where I was born actually, tens of thousands of people as I understand it have been purged from the voting rolls," Sanders said at a rally in State College. Earlier Tuesday, Mayor Bill de Blasio ordered an investigation into reports "that the voting lists in Brooklyn contain numerous errors, including the purging of entire buildings and blocks of voters from the voting lists," and New York City Comptroller Scott Stringer said he intends to find out why the Board of Elections "is so consistently disorganized, chaotic, and inefficient."

On Tuesday night, Board of Elections Executive Director Michael Ryan told CNN that his office is "not finding that there were issues throughout the city that are any different than what we experience in other elections," adding that "since the eyes and ears of the world are on New York, issues that are relatively routine for any election are receiving greater scrutiny." Of the 126,000 Democratic voters removed from the Brooklyn rolls, Ryan said, 12,000 had moved out of Brooklyn, 44,000 had been declared inactive after mailings to their homes were returned, and 70,000 had failed to vote in two consecutive federal elections or respond to cancel notices and were removed as inactive.

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