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Politics & Government

New Voting Machines Coming to New York

A 2002 federal mandate requires the state to replace traditional lever machines with new electronic voting systems; New York is more than four years past the deadline.

When New Yorkers hit the polls this fall, whether it's in the September primaries or November general election, there won't be any levers to pull. Instead, voters will get their first glimpse at new optical-scan voting machines that were certified by the state in December.

The process of choosing new electronic machines has been long and divisive, and not everyone is happy with the results. Just last month, Nassau County filed a lawsuit against the state, claiming the implementation of new machines is unconstitutional. A handful of other counties are considering joining the suit.   

AN EIGHT-YEAR SAGA

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New York is about five years late on fulfilling a 2002 federal mandate – the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) – that was passed after the debacle that followed the 2000 presidential election. That legislation required states to purchase equipment that would allow disabled people to vote independently. While that doesn't necessarily mean the new machines have to be electronic, it gives states few other choices.

State election commissioners had two main options: optical-scan machines, which scan traditional paper ballots and tally the votes, and touchscreen DREs (direct-recording electronic machines), which work like ATMs and leave no paper trail.

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States were required to have the machines in place when voters hit the polls for municipal elections in the spring of 2006. Only New York and Tennessee missed the deadline, and the Volunteer State had the machines in place later that year.

But New York's strict certification requirements, coupled with the disqualification of the firm hired to certify the machines and a host of other issues, dragged the process out for years. The state lost $50 million of the $190 million in federal funding promised to each state to help implement the new voting systems.

BENEFITS OF MISSED DEADLINES

However, most experts and several state and Westchester county officials said that the delay was ultimately beneficial. Problems have been reported with new machines from Maine to Alaska, including hacked computers, power failures, and software malfunctions. In some cases, more votes were counted than there were registered voters.

"It's been a very long saga, but we have certainly benefitted from the trial and error in other states," said Westchester County Board of Legislators Minority Leader James Maisano (R).

"We want elections to be as fair and user-friendly as possible, and this year may be a bump in the road, but we'll come through it."

Maisano said the county is planning to roll out an educational initiative to ensure that voters know what to expect. But he admitted that there will still be issues on Election Day.

"Many voters are going to walk into the polling places with no idea that the old machines are gone," he said. "We're going to try to do a public relations campaign and explain to people that this year is going to be different, but some people aren't going to get the message and they will get frustrated at the polls."

The county is also planning on hiring more poll workers than usual, he added.

Several officials at the County Board of Elections did not return multiple calls seeking comment.

NEW MACHINES MORE ACCOUNTABLE

The problems with electronic machines have been more acute with the DREs because they leave behind no independent paper trail. With the optical-scanners, election workers are at least able to count the paper ballots by hand.

Bruce Wells, the soon-to-be President of the Scarsdale Forum, has been involved with Scarsdale's village elections for a decade and was the chief organizer of the elections in March. He said that any new voting system should allow poll workers to verify the results by hand.

"A proper voting system needs to be auditable," he said. "The current mechanical [lever] voting machines actually fail this test; they simply show a tally of votes with no ability to recount the individual votes."

Further, he said, "my test for any voting system is that high school students should be able to run the election and verify the results. The current machines fail this, because an average high school student could not confirm that the machine actually recorded the votes correctly and was 100 percent reliable."

But the optical-scan machines do pass this test because the high school students could simply manually recount the paper ballots to verify the results. The machine just makes the counting quicker and easier.

Maisano said that the county would just as soon keep the lever machines for another year to avoid any problems during the important mid-term elections this fall. Every seat in the state Legislature and every statewide office, along with both of the state's U.S. Senate seats and a number of spots in Congress, are on the line.

But the pressure of the federal mandate is mounting.

"We understand we're under a mandate to purchase the new machines. None of us are happy about it, but with the federal government breathing down our necks and demanding that the entire state purchase new machines, we have to move forward," Maisano said.

OFFICIALS CRITICIZE NASSAU COUNTY LAWSUIT

Last month Nassau County filed a lawsuit alleging that the state's certification of the machines, and the 2005 state law mandating their purchase, was unconstitutional.

The suit claims that "computerized voting technology … is notoriously vulnerable to systemic hacking, tampering, manipulation and malfunction," and alleges that state officials certified machines based on promotional materials and not rigorous testing.

Further, the county's complaint takes issue with the vendor of the new machines, ES&S, which is currently fighting a federal antitrust lawsuit. The company's machines are used in almost 70 percent of election precincts across the county.

The machine certified by New York, the DS200, has malfunctioned before. A handful of Florida counties had major problems with the machine during the 2008 presidential election, according to theSt. Petersburg Times and Tampa Tribune.

While officials in some counties, including Dutchess County, are talking about signing on to the lawsuit, most see it as a waste of time. Maisano, the Westchester County Minority Leader, said that the federal mandate will ultimately trump any argument about the state law.

"After being advised by two consecutive district attorneys, most of the Legislature feels that Nassau has little chance of winning the lawsuit," he said, referring to DA Janet DiFiore and her predecessor, Jeanine Pirro. "The judge is going to look at the federal law."

Other news reports and opinion pieces have reflected Maisano's view.

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