The Public Interest Legal Foundation (PILF) has uncovered alarming inaccuracies in New York’s voter registration rolls, including nearly 50,000 registrants with active records in other states, thousands of duplicate entries, and hundreds of records with fake or placeholder birthdates.
PILF’s comprehensive review found 49,933 New York registrants who also appear on voter rolls in other states. The largest overlap was with Florida, which accounts for 24,873 of the duplicate registrations.
The review also uncovered 6,788 duplicate registrations at the same address caused by typographical errors, missing Social Security information, or hyphenated name confusion. PILF’s research team also identified 2,823 inter-county duplicates inside New York’s statewide database, with more than 1,000 marked as “active” in multiple counties simultaneously. Another 3,845 records contained placeholder or fictitious birth dates such as “1/1/1900,” which can complicate standard verification checks and make it difficult to confirm a registrant’s eligibility.
PILF’s analysis went beyond simply counting errors. A random sample of placeholder birthdate records revealed serious discrepancies, including voters credited with casting ballots despite impossible or inaccurate birthdates. In one case, a Brooklyn voter listed as “born in 1901” was confirmed alive and well as she was actually born in 1941. Additional sampling of 15 problematic records revealed that six registrants had died as far back as 1998, yet remained active on the rolls, while four registrants could not be matched to any Social Security or credit data, raising questions about their identity and eligibility.
“These are critical failures that put election security at risk,” said PILF President J. Christian Adams. “New York needs to start addressing these issues now.”
PILF has conducted similar reviews in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maine, uncovering thousands of questionable records in each state. The organization is calling for greater transparency and collaboration with election officials to fix these problems before they impact future elections.
“This is not just a New York issue,” said PILF Research Director Logan Churchwell. “Our work in multiple states proves that voter roll maintenance is falling behind across the country. But New York’s numbers are some of the worst we’ve seen yet.”
The letter to the NY State Board of Elections can be found here.
For more information or to schedule an interview with J. Christian Adams or Logan Churchwell, please contact Douglas Blair at dblair@publicinterestlegal.org or call 503-956-9899