Two weeks before New Yorkers go to the polls for the citywide primary, public officials expressed outrage and concern yesterday at the condition of the city’s voter records, demanding an investigation into the types of irregularities disclosed by The New York Sun.

The public advocate, Betsy Gotbaum, a Democrat who is running for re-election, said in an e-mail: “These false registrations may in some cases be pranks and in others outright fraud. Either way, they must be purged in order to protect the integrity of the democratic process.”

The Sun’s review of voter-registration records at the Board of Elections found that dozens of voters had registered in New York City claiming to reside at addresses that correspond to city, state, and federal office buildings, schools, churches and clerical offices, and major commercial buildings – including Macy’s, Madison Square Garden, and Radio City Music Hall. The Sun also noticed curious names provided by registrants, including “Donald Duck,” “Elmer J. Fudd,” and “Jesus Christ.”

“I call on the New York City Board of Elections to conduct an immediate investigation into this matter so that it does not affect the September primary,” Ms. Gotbaum, who is opposed by three fellow Democrats, said.

Also calling for scrutiny of the electoral process is the speaker of the City Council, Gifford Miller of Manhattan, who is a Democratic mayoral candidate. The council appoints the 10 members of the Board of Elections, which currently consists of five Republicans and five Democrats, on the recommendation of the organizations of the city’s two major political parties.

A council spokeswoman, Leticia Theodore, said yesterday, “The speaker thinks it’s evident that we need to take a closer look at the oversight of the current system and the way voters are registered.”

The council minority leader, James Oddo, a Republican of Staten Island, said there was a long tradition of such irregularities in the city’s voter rolls.

He said the board’s executive director, John Ravitz, a Republican and former assemblyman, “is an earnest, honest, and genuine guy,” but Mr. Oddo said of the board: “It’s not an institution that instills a great deal of confidence historically.”

Mr. Ravitz responded yesterday to the officials’ calls for investigations, saying: “If people really think two weeks before a primary that I can now have all my entire staff look throughout the voter rolls and look at an address that might be suspect on the face, it’s an unrealistic feat.”

He earlier said the board does not independently conduct systematic reviews of the voter rolls but will probe questionable registrations if someone brings specific charges to its attention. He added that it would be nearly impossible to investigate all registrant names that appeared suspicious, lest someone really named “Lou Gehrig,” to use Mr. Ravitz’s example, be subjected to unfair and undue scrutiny.

Moreover, Mr. Ravitz said, many of the dubious registrants and those who registered at questionable addresses would not be voting in this election, because their failure to cast ballots in the last four years rendered them “inactive” and thus ineligible to vote.

“I don’t want anyone to think there are going to be Elmer Fudds voting in the primary,” Mr. Ravitz said.

Mr. Ravitz said the Elmer J. Fudd unearthed by the Sun would not be voting only because he had not cast a ballot in the last four years, not because he was named “Elmer J. Fudd” or could not be proved to exist outside the world of Looney Tunes.

Disqualified voters who registered using addresses that correspond to government office buildings, too, would be ineligible only because they had not voted within the last four years, not because they had registered claiming to live at an address that has no residences.

Voters who registered having sworn to patently false claims but who have maintained active voter histories remain eligible to vote in this year’s elections, Mr. Ravitz said.

Mr. Ravitz said that insofar as the requirements of keeping registrants on the voter rolls for four years posed problems of authenticity, it was the fault of the state Legislature, because the relevant election laws are determined by Albany, not the board or City Hall.

Mr. Ravitz also said he was hamstrung by insufficient resources.

“If Ms. Gotbaum wants to call for us to search our entire voter rolls, Ms. Gotbaum needs to somehow get me more money in the budget,” he said. The board has a budget of $78 million.

A candidate for Manhattan borough president and a member of the City Council, Eva Moskowitz, Democrat of the East Side, said the board must be “proactive.”

Calling the board’s approach “ridiculous” and “government at its worst,” Ms. Moskowitz said investigating and rooting out potential irregularities in the voter rolls “is the Board of Elections’ job.”

“They don’t have too much to do other than prepare for elections and make sure the lists are clear and honest,” she said.

Mayor Bloomberg and some of the public officials trying to unseat him this year, meanwhile, responded by declaring their affection for the democratic process.

“Voting is a sacred right and responsibility,” Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement sent by e-mail. “Abuse of this fundamental right is unacceptable. …”

One of his Democratic challengers, C. Virginia Fields, the Manhattan borough president, said in an e-mail: “Placing false names and/or addresses on voter registration forms and other documents undermines the city’s democratic process. Therefore, the entire election process – from signature collection to the actual act of voting – must be taken very seriously.

“For its part, the Board of Elections must work to improve its efforts to weed out false names and addresses. The board has an important role to play in this process and it cannot afford to be asleep at the wheel,” the statement read.

The Democratic mayoral front-runner, Fernando Ferrer, said in a written statement that voting fraud disenfranchises everyone “and must be vigorously prosecuted.”

The statement from the former Bronx borough president also said: “We must also be vigilant that efforts to crack down on voter fraud do not result in an illegal purging of legitimate voters from the rolls.”