NYS last in nation
Still no decision on voting machines



GUILDERLAND — New York State is in last place when it comes to new voting machines. New York is the only state in the union and its territories, like Guam, that failed to comply with a federal mandate requiring all polling places to provide voters with new electronic voting machines.

New York’s current lever machines have been deemed illegal by the Congressional Help America Vote Act in 2000.

While many states chose a single voting machine, the New York Legislature failed to make a decision and left it up to individual counties.

Nearly a quarter of a billion dollars of federal funds are at stake as counties must each now choose a voting system and have them in place by the 2007 primaries.

For the past few weeks the Albany County Board of Elections has held public demonstrations in Guilderland of ballot marking and vote-by-phone systems, which will allow disabled citizens to vote independently.
"The state will not be replacing lever machines this year"We will be replacing them in 2007," said Bo Lapari, director of New Yorkers for Verified Voting. Lapari is one of 12 members on a New York State advisory committee who is participating on the testing and certifying of voting machines.

Some of the machines on display at Guilderland’s Western Turnpike Golf Course Clubhouse, like the Avanti and Populax, are among five choices that counties have for an accessible voting machine.

In April, the Department of Justice allowed New York to postpone compliance to the federally mandated Help America Vote Act until 2007. In early May, New York submitted an additional plan in court pertaining to the lawsuit filed against it by the Department of Justice. The additional plan called for placing one or more accessible ballot-marking or vote-by-phone systems in each of the state’s 62 counties before the 2006 elections.
Election officials and voting machine advocates often refer to this 2006 plan as "Plan B" or as "interim solution plan."

According to New York State Board of Elections spokeswoman Allison Carr, the vote-by-phone systems will be available this year at polling places. The way it works, Carr told The Enterprise, is that a number will first be dialed by a poll worker and, once a voter’s registration is verified for that particular district, the voter may then proceed to cast his or her vote by phone. The system cannot be used outside of a polling place, said Carr.
"Once the testing is complete, we will issue a report," Carr said about the accessible ballot markers being tested for this year.

All testing is done by an independent company, overseen by the state’s 12-member advisory committee.
"When a machine is certified, the county is free to pick it," said Lapari. "I want the testing to be very thorough."
Why new machines"

The voting machine controversy stems from the 2000 presidential race in Florida, in which the Supreme Court intervened and decided George W. Bush won the race over former Vice President Al Gore, after numerous recounts and questionable ballots.

In New York State, after years of debate in the legislature, Attorney General Elliot Spitzer issued a report in February of 2005 stating that New York missed its deadline to comply with HAVA in 2004 and would not be given a second extension after 2006. Spitzer warned that, if the state could not comply, it would lose approximately $221 million in federal funds to upgrade its voting system. Even if the money were lost, New York would still be forced by the federal government to upgrade its voting systems, Spitzer said at the time.

After months of party-line bickering, the New York State HAVA committee handed down a decision just before the session ended, allowing individual counties to pick new voting machines.

The decision sent scores of voting-machine lobbyists from the halls of the legislature to the doors of county officials around the state.

The decision essentially comes down to two types of voting machines: the optical scanner and the direct recording electronic machines.

The optical scanner scans paper ballots filled out by voters and records the vote electronically, much like taking a standardized test in most schools. The original paper ballot is then stored in a locked box behind the machine, providing an original paper trail. The technology has been used in other states for more than two decades.

The DRE machines tabulate votes electronically and print out the results on a long roll of paper very similar to that of an ATM (automatic teller machine). Voters enter their selections using punch keys, following instructions on the computer screen, and then the vote is recorded. The technology has been used in elections for fewer than 10 years.
Lapari described the Plan B solution as "what can only be called a minimal implementation of HAVA," but added that it’s better than "attempting a wholesale replacing of lever machines without proper certification by 2006.
"It would’ve been a real train wreck," Lapari told The Enterprise.

The purpose of the accessibility ballot markers is to allow disabled voters to privately and independently cast their votes, according to New York State deputy director of public information, Robert Brehm.
"Right now, we are testing the machines for one year’s time in New York as an interim solution," Brehm said.

Lapari, a strong advocate of optical-scan technology during the state’s legislative discussion on the matter, said he hopes to see some counties still consider the technology.
"We know it will include DRE’s," said Lapari about the counties’ ultimate voting machine decision. "We hope it will include optical scanners.
"The cost of implementing DRE’s is going to be huge. The county commissioners just don’t get it," Lapari said, adding it could take two DRE’s to replace a single lever machine at a range of $8,000 to $10,000 apiece.

The real problem has yet to come, according to Lapari. County election officials who seem to have already made up their minds on buying DRE’s say they will not be able to use the machines next year that they buy for this year because they are compatible with optical scanners, not DRE’s, said Lapari.

The money for buying this year’s machines is coming out of each county’s HAVA funds and testing for the 2007 state-wide replacement machines will begin this summer, according to the New York State Board of Elections.
"By the end of summer, we will start to see counties certify machines and begin placing orders," said Lapari. "There’s going to be a lot of people on Election Day who are going to go in, see a new machine, and never knew it was going to be there."