Mere weeks after the Daily News reported the Board’s Brooklyn outpost dug up nearly 1,600 uncounted votes from 2012, the agency confirms a Board worker in the same office mistakenly destroyed 20 pages of 2013 Republican petitions. It wasn’t immediately clear Monday exactly how the petitions — voter signature sheets that are gathered to get candidates on the ballot — ended up in the dustbin of electoral history. “A single petition volume of 20 pages was inadvertently destroyed” last Friday, Board spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez said in a statement responding to a Daily News inquiry about the destroyed docs. “Fortunately, we have obtained copies of the petition volume in question from both the filer and a member of the public who had previously requested a copy of this volume,” Vazquez continued. “Board staff compared the two copies and found them to be identical.”
Vazquez chalked up the shredding to a simple “miscommunication” between employees at the oft-criticized agency.
The Board also couldn’t immediately say exactly which Republican candidates appeared on the scrapped petitions — which are supposed to be retained on file by the agency after they’re submitted — but we await an update.
There’s nothing short of an open civil war going on between factions of the Brooklyn GOP right now, so Republican politics in the borough are heated, to say the least. The party faithful are mainly split between support of county Chairman Craig Eaton and of state Sen. Martin Golden.
Full Article: “Miscommunication” Led To NYC Board Of Elections Shredding 20 Pages Of GOP Petitions | New York Daily News.