NYC's Board of Elections director blames 'wet ballots' and 'high turnout' for voting issues — and not the city's voter purge

The executive director of the New York City Board of Elections claims rain and "wet ballots" caused problems for voters at the polls on Tuesday — but failed to mention the state's restrictive voting laws and propensity to purge voters.

"When you have higher turnout and you have more paper passing through the system, you're gonna have some issues," BOE Executive Director Michael J. Ryan, a Queens County Republican, told NY1 in a video posted to Twitter.

Ryan went on to suggest that the rainy conditions in New York on Election Day may have led to wetness from peoples' clothes to transfer onto their ballots.

Director Ryan didn't mention the city's "perennial problem" of voters going missing from voter rolls — an issue that was raised once again during the state's September primaries.

In 2016, investigations revealed that the NYCBOE illegally purged 200,000 people from its voters rolls. In November 2017, then-New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman settled with the BOE after suing it for the illegal purge.

New York is also one of only 13 states that do not offer early voting, instead forcing voters to cast ballots on Election Day in spite of it not being a federal holiday.

"We did encourage people before Election Day to stay patient," Ryan said in the NY1 interview. "We had a feeling it was going to be a high turnout election."