.... Sixty of the 938 people who showed up to vote, he says, arrived only to discover their names weren’t listed in the poll books.

Things like this happen in every election — polling places get moved, people go to the wrong ones — but not, Navarro says, like this.

Navarro began looking for patterns among those whose names had gone missing. Many, he found, were newly registered voters or new to his division. Several, using smartphones, showed him that their names appeared on the state’s SURE voter-registration database as registered at that location. But some cases defied that trend: There was an elderly man who Navarro knew voted in every election and who had lived in the same place for years. He wasn’t on the list, either. “This man, he takes voting very seriously, you know?” Navarro recalls. “He was very upset.”

Navarro wasn’t the only one reporting such problems — similar concerns were being echoed around the city. ....