http://www.timesunion.com/AspStories/story.asp?storyID=298280&category=REGIONOTHER&BCCode=&newsdate=10/25/2004<snip>
However, the county's purge appears to be about four times larger than the last one. In 2002, the county dropped about 5,700 voters from its roll, according to the most recent annual report filed with the state Board of Elections
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ALBANY -- Imagine that everyone in the city of Cohoes suddenly disappeared. Then the same vanishing act in Coeymans.
More than 22,000 people suddenly would be gone. And notable in a county where politics is like air, so would their votes.
In recent months, that many people have slipped from Albany County's voting rolls in one of the largest and most sweeping purges in memory.
Updated voter lists help prevent ballot fraud by making it less likely that someone could vote using a phantom voter's name. Accurate rolls also show political clout shifting from shrinking cities to expanding suburbs.
In Albany County, more than 10 percent of all registered voters -- 22,200 people -- were dropped because their whereabouts could not be proved, according to a Times Union computer analysis of enrollment records from March and October.
The Albany County Board of Elections dropped these voters after thousands of notification postcards mailed to more than 188,000 last-known addresses in April were returned as undeliverable. A returned card signals that the voter no longer lives there, having moved or died.
County elections officials say they cannot tell if this purge is more extensive than past cleanups, and that records of past purges were never kept.
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