Thousands of metropolitan-area residents are illegally registered to vote in both New York and Florida, a Post investigation has found.
A review of voter registration databases turned up more than 14,000 voters in New York City, Nassau and Suffolk counties who are also registered to vote in Miami-Dade, Palm Beach and Broward counties, in South Florida.
New York City has 11,642 voters with illegal dual registrations. Nassau has 1,454; Suffolk has 1,400.
“Wow. That’s news to me. It’s illegal,” state Board of Elections spokesman Lee Daghlian said when told of the duplicate registrations.
“You are not allowed to be registered in two places at once,” said Eleanor Sciglibaglio, associate chief clerk of the Nassau County Board of Elections. “They could face a criminal prosecution.”
The Post compared databases from New York City, Nassau and Suffolk to the databases of the three Florida counties, provided by Strategic Technologies & Research of Fort Lauderdale.
Dual registrations create the possibility of voter fraud – with individuals able to vote in each jurisdiction through use of direct and absentee balloting. It is not known if such fraud is common.
Elections officials speculate that most duplicate registrations occur when people move out of state and fail to report their prior registration. And many New Yorkers have winter residences in Florida.
“It is possible that they didn’t mean to do anything wrong,” said Broward County Supervisor of Elections Jane Carroll. “But it’s also possible that they can vote in both places.”
Failing to disclose a prior registration is a crime punishable by up to five years in prison in Florida, and four years in New York.
“You know, I never thought of that,” said Martha Warren, who moved last year from Oceanside, L.I., to Tamarac, Fla., where she and her husband registered to vote without mentioning they were registered in New York.
Asked if she had voted in both states, Warren chuckled and said, “No way.”
Marvin Hellerman of Great Neck, L.I., said, “I don’t know what the hell’s going on” when asked why he and his wife, Claire, are registered in Nassau County, N.Y., and Broward County.
Hellerman said he sold his house in Fort Lauderdale years ago and registered to vote in New York. He said he assumed he had correctly filled out the New York form.
Broward County’s Carroll said there is no national database officials can check to prevent duplicate registrations. Florida officials can check if someone is registered elsewhere in the state.
Naomi Bernstein, spokeswoman for the city’s Board of Elections, said there’s a system in place to prevent double registrations in the five boroughs, but not in the state.
“In a perfect world, we’d use your Social Security number as the identifier number” on voter rolls, Bernstein said. But privacy advocates have opposed such a link.
Elections officials contacted by The Post said they would remove voters from their rolls if told they are registered elsewhere. But they said they do not plan to do a nationwide search to identify multiple registrants.
“We are not an investigative agency,” Bernstein said.
The city elections board has referred double registrants to the district attorney’s office, she said, but she did not know of any cases that were prosecuted.
GRAPH
DUAL VOTERS: Here the breakdown on New York voters who are also registered to vote in Florida:
Manhattan 2,882
Queens 3,298
Brooklyn 3,294
Bronx 1,610
Staten Island 558
Nassau County 1,454
Suffolk County 1,400