Photo: Mayoral Photography Office

Closed polling stations, malfunctioning ballot scanners, the mysterious disappearance of some 50,000 registered Democrats: These are just some of the “irregularities” reported by New York City residents trying to vote today.

Fortunately, top officials have now promised to reform the city’s famously dysfunctional Board of Elections. Unfortunately, for thousands of voters hoping to participate in New York’s crucial closed primary, those reforms might be coming one election too late.

In response to today’s utter shitshow of a primary election, New York City comptroller Scott Stringer announced Tuesday evening that his office will be conducting an audit of the city’s Board of Elections, specifically citing the agency’s “incompetence.” From the New York Times:

Mr. Stringer said in a statement that the Board of Elections had confirmed that more than 125,000 Democratic voters in Brooklyn were removed from voter rolls between November 2015 and this month. The decline, reported by WNYC, occurred “without any adequate explanation furnished by the Board of Elections,” Mr. Stringer said.

“There is nothing more sacred in our nation than the right to vote, yet election after election, reports come in of people who were inexplicably purged from the polls, told to vote at the wrong location or unable to get in to their polling site,” Mr. Stringer said.

Shortly afterward, Mayor Bill de Blasio issued a press release supporting the audit and further pledging to hold election officials responsible for ensuring that “voters are not disenfranchised.”

“These errors today indicate that additional major reforms will be needed to the Board of Election and in the state law governing it,” said de Blasio in a statement. “The perception that numerous voters may have been disenfranchised undermines the integrity of the entire electoral process and must be fixed.”

Earlier today, the mayor’s Twitter account claimed there’s “nothing more punk rock” than voting. Given how difficult it has been for many New Yorkers, he just might be right.