More than 168,000 people cast paper ballots at the polls in last fall's presidential election because their names did not appear on the voter rolls. The Board of Elections of the City of New York disqualified more than 78,000 of those ballots — and those votes did not count.

Now, WNYC has learned that none of those voters were notified in time to challenge that decision as required by law.

Lauren Wolfe of Brooklyn Heights is one of those voters. On Election Day, she looked up her poll site online, found the address on Joralemon Street and went there to vote. But when she arrived, poll workers told her she was in the wrong place, and directed her to a different location a few blocks away.

So she went there — and her name wasn’t on the rolls there, either. Poll workers at the second site told her to go back the first site. Wolfe said she made this trip back and forth about four times. At the second site, poll workers gave her an affidavit ballot — those are the paper ballots with envelopes for people whose names do not appear on the rolls.

But Wolfe was nervous.

"I said, ‘Well, I don’t want to do that unless you can promise me my vote is going to count.’ And the woman said to me, ‘I promise it will, 100 percent’," said Wolfe.

Fast forward to March, four months after the election. Wolfe got a letter from the Board of Elections saying her affidavit ballot did not count because she voted at the wrong poll site. Wolfe was so upset she reached out to the good government group Common Cause for help.

"For the first time, I understood what it could mean to be disenfranchised — whether this was unintentional or not, it still made me feel very distant from the democratic process," said Wolfe.

The law says the Board is supposed to notify voters "immediately" by first class mail if it is not going to count a vote. Voters have 20 days to appeal the Board’s decision in court. The Board failed to notify any of the disqualified voters in time for them to appeal, according to records released to WNYC under the state Freedom of Information Law.

"What we see here in New York City is that the voters are denied any chance of defending their own ballot," said Susan Lerner, head of Common Cause. She added, "They have no recourse. They've simply been disenfranchised. And that is scandalous and completely unacceptable."

Common Cause, along with New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman and the Justice Department, are currently suing the City Board of Elections in federal court over the management of the voter rolls.

Michael Ryan, executive director of the City Board, looked up Wolfe’s voter history at WNYC’s request. It turns out Wolfe’s ballot would have counted if she had voted at the first polling site. Ryan said there is no evidence to support her story that poll workers misdirected her, and by the time she was notified, it was too late.

"You could do all the data analysis you want to do at the back end, what I’m telling you is it is impossible for the City Board of Elections to meet a 20-day deadline, particularly in a presidential election year," Ryan said.

The Board certified the election results on Dec. 6 in advance of the Electoral College vote.

So how far off is the Board from that legal timeline? The Board says they started mailing notices on Nov. 30, two days after the deadline, and they were still sending notices to voters as of this week.

Of course not all elections have the wide margins of a presidential contest.

"My election is like a glowing example of how things could have turned very differently had not every vote been counted," said City Councilmember Robert Cornegy, who represents Bedford-Stuyvesant and northern Crown Heights in Brooklyn.

Back in 2013, Cornegy was in an extremely competitive primary battle against Kristen John Foy, a leader in Rev. Al Sharpton’s National Action Network. Cornegy was ahead by less than 100 votes on Election Day. The board’s ballot rulings ended up in court. He won by just 68 votes.

"I'm a living example of the importance of every single vote counting," said Cornegy

Cornegy is up for re-election and may face another primary this year. All 51 Council seats will be up for a vote, including seven open seats where there’s no incumbent. The winners will be decided by voters this fall — if every vote counts.

At a budget City Council committee hearing Friday, Ryan was challenged to come up with a solution to the slow certification process. Councilmember Ben Kallos, who represents Manhattan's Upper East Side, asked Ryan how much money it would take to speed up the notification system.

Kallos added that his wife recently received a letter telling her that her affidavit ballot did count.

Ryan said it’s an “entirely manual process.” He added, “No amount of money is going to suspend the time space continuum. That is something that we all must live with that is a law of nature.

“It’s the 20 days for the court challenge that is the issue,” Ryan said, “not the technology, not the processing.”

Ryan also said if voters were concerned about their ballots, they could have checked earlier.

“This is an open process and people are free a week after the election to come to the Board of Elections and challenge their affidavit if they think it’s an issue,” Ryan said.

Ultimately, Ryan defended his agency and said the blame rested just as much with voters.

“There is something in this society that I think is somewhat missing and that is personal responsibility,” said Ryan, “And it doesn't all fall to government to fix that.”

This story was updated at 8:45 p.m. Fri., May 12, 2017, with details about the City Council hearing that afternoon.

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this article incorrectly said that Councilmember Ben Kallos' wife's affidavit ballot did not count. Her affidavit ballot did count. The text and accompanying audio was updated 10:45 a.m. Tues., May 16, 2017.