CONSPIRACY: OMG CLINTON STOLE NEW YORK WITH A VOTER PURGE!!!11!!1!!!!!1!!

Yay! We're back to conspiracy theories! Last night, Clinton won New York by a 16% margin; however, in New York City, many Democratic voters were "wrongly" purged from the rolls, disenfranchising them. Sanders supporters were quick to assign blame to Hillary Clinton, with accusations that she won New York by cheating through this voter purge.

I say "wrongly" purged (in scare quotes) because the linked article states why people were purged, including having moved away or having failed to vote in the last two elections plus having failed to respond to mailers required to continue registration at that address. Anecdotal evidence cites entire buildings or blocks that were purged (which could only be correct if the building or block were torn down). However, in order to actually prove that on the day of the election, you would have to verify voting status with every person in that building or block (which obviously hasn't happened), or you would have to analyze the purge data to look for that, something that staff wouldn't have had time to do on election day. 

Clearly, a fancy prison uniform.

These things are all proven, according to blatantly pro-Sanders Salon.com. They also claim that the voters in question had not been notified, but the election official quoted in the first link claimed that they should have received and not responded to several mailers after having failed to vote in the last two elections. If that is the case, these voters weren't even disenfranchised; they were rightly purged due to lack of activity, per traditional rules to eliminate fraudulent voting, including the dead vote.

In addition, people have claimed that "seemingly all purged voters" were Sanders supporters, based on anecdotal evidence likely gathered in a pro-Sanders subreddit, just like the 6/6 coin tosses for Clinton claim that was eventually determined to be 6/7 for Sanders. Because selection bias is totally not a thing.

Therefore, Clinton won only because she is a cheater, cheater, pumpkin pantsuit wearer.

What Premises Are Required for This to Be True?

1. Clinton was polling (IIRC) 13% higher than Sanders for New York. Such polls typically have a margin of error between 3% and 6%. Clinton won the state by 16%, 3% higher than the polls indicated. Despite being within the expected margin of error, despite being consistent with the poll results, and despite the expected margin of error not remotely approaching a tie, this 3% is somehow very important. (Sadly, since the election, the pre-election polls are very hard to find.)
   
   UPDATE: I found a poll prediction from 538, including work by Nate Silver himself. They predicted a Clinton win by 15%, with a 6% margin of error. So basically, the election result was pretty much dead-on to the prediction of "the country's most accurate poll predictor."
   Implausible.
2. Clinton won NYC but lost other counties in the state. The area with the largest purge that is in question is Brooklyn, a county that voted for Clinton at 60%. In order for this to have been a cheat in Clinton's favor, we must assume that the purged voters would not vote in line with general statistics for the county. Implausible.
3. It would have to have been a selective purge of Sanders supporters. Unlikely.
4. The purges started in November, so to selectively purge Sanders voters would require knowing who the Sanders voters were back when Sanders was considered a candidate good enough to last a couple more months, "but he should really pack it in because Clinton is obviously the only Dem with a chance." Implausible and this changes 3 to implausible too.
5. Plus, to motivate this kind of selective purge would have required believing that Sanders was a viable threat to Clinton, with a reasonable chance of winning New York-- again, back in November. Implausible and now 3 might as well be impossible.
6. Since the allegations include that whole buildings and even whole blocks were purged, in order for this to be a selective purge of only Sanders voters, every voter in those buildings and blocks would have to be Sanders supporters, unlike the other buildings and blocks in the area. Hilariously, absurdly implausible.

Let's Do Math!

Number of people purged: 125,000

Number of people that Clinton won by: 300,000

For the sake of argument, let's assume that every purged voter would have voted for Sanders. That gives Sanders 41% of the margin of victory, and thus he still loses. Clinton is ahead 175,000. If literally every purged voter voted for Sanders...

Clinton still wins by 50,000 votes.

When your conspiracy theory gets debunked by Fortune Magazine, you need to give it up.

Update (midnightish)!

Having now read approximately a gazillion articles by Sanders supporters about the problem, I have discovered proof-- proof!-- that these voters were wrongly purged! You see, many of them were purged because they hadn't voted in over four years, which is totally unfair because some people only vote in Presidential elections! (The last one was 3.5 years ago, so they didn't vote in that either.) This is according to pro-Sanders blog site, USUncut.

To add to the confusion, approximately 126,000 voters in Brooklyn were purged from voter rolls between October and April, many for no reason other than the fact that they hadn’t voted in four years or more (most Americans only vote every four years), and tens of thousands of others for simply moving.

It is voter fraud to vote in a district in which you do not live, unless the law allows you to choose a polling station for convenience. Thus, it is correct to purge voters who moved out of the district. It is also correct to purge voters who are dead or moved but without having mail bounce back to the office that tracks voters to purge, which is why there is a four year rule. And yet somehow, someone managed to purge only Sanders supporters who hadn't voted in over four years. Clinton supporters were obviously left intact despite this process being done by computer.

So basically, they're suing because they were rightfully purged, which is "disenfranchisement." Meanwhile, Clinton supporters are terrible people if these nonsensical claims make us laugh.

RIP Prince.