Scott Stringer said the audit is necessary because of "widespread reporters of poll site problems and other irregularities."
Among the issues he pointed to was 125,000 people who were evidently removed from New York state voter rolls, 60,000 voters who received notices last month telling them the primary date was in September, polls that did not open in time, and election workers who apparently were not adequately trained.
Meanwhile the New York State Attorney General's office said Tuesday night it has received over 700 complaints regarding problems at the polls.
In some cases, the office said, entire buildings and blocks were missing from the voting rolls.
Many Sanders supporters who claimed they were kept from the polls showed up at the New York branch of the campaign's official primary watch party at KBH Bierhalle, a beer hall in Brooklyn's Park Slope neighborhood.
There, New York City Council members and celebrities like R.E.M. singer Michael Stipe mingled with rank-and-file Sanders supporters, and a handful of Clinton backers who cheered after CNN called the primary in favor of the former Secretary of State on the big screen.
City Councilman Jumaane Williams, who led Sanders on a walking tour of public housing projects in Brooklyn's Brownsville neighborhood on Sunday, called the voting problems in his borough a "real travesty."
"In a race like this, you need to engender as much voter trust as you can, and unfortunately [this primary] did the opposite," he said.
New York has had one of the lowest voter turnout rates in the country, and problems at the polls were the subject of a City Council hearing in 2012.
Williams is now calling for another because the problem "seems to be getting worse."
Comptroller Stringer's public endorsement of Clinton almost a year ago led some to question his ability to conduct a neutral audit, but Williams said the problems in New York's election processes transcend political partisanship.
"I think that people on both sides understand how bad this is that people don't have trust in the system," he said. "So I have full faith that no matter who is supporting whom, we want to get to the bottom of why people are disenfranchised in this system."
Washington-based attorney John Carpenter said that he traveled from the nation's capital to volunteer for a voter-protection program affiliated with the Sanders campaign to "protect the integrity of the system."
It was a busy day for him and his fellow lawyers in Brooklyn.
"As an observer, working at this voter protection operation, our phones were ringing incessantly the entire day," he said. "We had 50 people working. As soon as their call ended, another call came in immediately for the entire day. There were problems throughout the state."
Sitting beside him were fellow attorney Alvin Guttman who traveled from Florida to observe the primary and reported similar woes and would-be Sanders voter Ann Bassen, a Democrat for 20 years surprised to find herself listed as "unaffiliated" after renewing her driver's license.
Not everyone at the pro-Sanders bash was unhappy, and one Clinton supporter — who wished only to be identified as a "young progressive activist" — upended voter stereotypes as a millennial and an Israeli-Palestinian dove.
At the Brooklyn Democratic debate, Clinton took a hawkish line defending Israel, and Sanders pushed her to agree that the Jewish state went too far in its "disproportionate" attacks on Gaza in 2014.
The Clinton supporter wore a T-shirt with the Hebrew and Arabic message "Save Sheikh Jarrah," the name of an Arab neighborhood in Jerusalem facing Israeli expansion.
Despite preferring Sanders' stance on Palestinian rights, the supporter said he trusted Clinton to have a "better idea of how to get things done."
"So I hope this is mostly campaign posturing to maintain the sort of traditional, establishment Jewish vote," he said, referring to Clinton's platform.
Reporter Jacob Kornbluh from the Jewish Insider reported that Brooklyn's Hasidic enclaves leaned strongly for Clinton — 60 percent to 39 percent in Borough Park, 53 percent to 46 percent in Midwood, and 64 percent to 36 percent in Coney Island and Seagate.
Meanwhile, prominent Palestinian-American activist Linda Sarsour told the crowd at the bar that Sanders carried the Arab neighborhoods of Astoria, Queens — home to "Little Egypt" — and Bay Ridge, Brooklyn — home to "Little Palestine."
"Bernie Sanders engaged with some of the most marginalized communities," she said as she roused the crowd, using a wooden whiskey barrel as her podium.
"Today we may not have won New York state, but communities have won. Organizers have won," she said.
Documentary filmmaker Josh Fox, nominated for an Academy Award for "Gasland," said that the fact that all but seven counties in upstate New York went to Sanders shows the strength of the senator's proposal to ban the controversial form of natural gas drilling known as fracking.
The issue remains a lightning rod in New York amid plans to build the so-called Constitution Pipeline, carrying fracked natural gas from Pennsylvania through four Empire State counties — Delaware, Broome, Chenango and Schoharie — crossing the Catskill and Adirondack Mountains.
Sanders won all four of these counties handily.
"Everywhere I go, and I'm on a 100-city tour of the United States right now, someone's fighting a pipeline," said Fox. "That's what the natural gas bridge of Hillary Clinton means. I'm sure that this pipeline grab right now is one of the largest eminent domain grabs in the history of the United States."
Such environmental, energy and land isssues will likely animate voters in Pennsylvania, another delegate-rich state that votes next week and has not yet banned this form of drilling.
The Keystone State is widely considered a must-win for Sanders, if he intends to overcome the increasingly daunting odds against his bid for the White House.
Photo caption 1:
The scene at Hillary Clinton's rally at the Sheraton Hotel in Manhattan. (Photo by Nick Divito.)
Photo caption 2:
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump fills out paperwork at his polling place in New York, Tuesday, April 19, 2016. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)
Photo caption 3:
A Hillary Clinton supporter in primary night finery she made herself. (Photo by Nick Divito.)
Photo caption 4:
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton points to members in the audience after speaking at the 2016 Legislative Conference of North America's Building Trades Unions in Washington, Tuesday, April 19, 2016. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)
Photo caption 5:
Academy award-nominated "Gasland" director Josh Fox, a Sanders supporter, speaks in Brooklyn. (photo by Adam Klasfeld)
Photo caption 6:
The scene at the Sanders campaign's official primary watch party at KBH Bierhalle, a beer hall in Brokklyn's Park Slope neighborhood. (photo by Adam Klasfeld)
CNS reporters Nick Divito and Adam Klasfeld in Manhattan contributed to this report.
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