New York, NY - February 22, 2017 - Today, New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman responded to a congressional inquiry, making clear that there was not one single substantiated claim of voter fraud in New York last year. Rather, Attorney General Schneiderman wrote, “New York’s voting system faces many challenges,” with restrictive laws, rules and procedures, as well as administrative errors, that both legally and illegally disenfranchise New Yorkers seeking to exercise their right to vote.

The letter was sent today to Rep. Elijah E. Cummings (Ranking Member, Committee on Oversight and Government Reform), Rep. Robert Brady (Ranking Member, Committee on House Administration), and Rep. James Clyburn (Assistant Democratic Leader).

Read the full letter here.

As the letter notes, in December 2016 the Office of the Attorney General released a comprehensive report detailing the many issues voters faced at the polls during the April 2016 primary election.  Attorney General Schneiderman highlighted his recently introduced New York Votes Act, which seeks to address many of these ongoing issues by updating the state’s voting systems through early voting, automatic and same-day registration, consolidated primaries, shortened party registration deadlines, and more.

Attorney General Schneiderman also recently filed suit against the New York City Board of Elections for widespread violations that illegally purged over 200,000 New Yorkers from the voter rolls.

“Our democracy is ailing, with too few eligible citizens registered to vote, too few of those who are registered exercising this fundamental right, and too many states devising methods to suppress the vote, rather than encourage participation in our nation’s elections. We would be happy to work with Congress to solve these problems – many of which persist not only in New York but also in states across the country – rather than seek to address the imaginary problem of voter fraud,” Attorney General Schneiderman concluded.