The Ithaca
Journal endorses optical scan. They misstate the amount of lobbying dollars,
which is over 1 Million dollars, not 1 Billion.
http://www.theithacajournal.com/news/stories/20050513/opinion/2134984.html
Opinion -
Friday, May 13, 2005
Optical scan
voting: Albany can't decide, so Tompkins should
EDITORIAL
In one move
on Tuesday, state lawmakers delivered bad news and good news to those
interested in making sure that future elections run smoothly in this state.
First, the
bad news.
Following
the infamous hanging-chad debacle in Florida and the chaos it tossed into the
2000 presidential election, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act. Among
its goals: Entice states to upgrade old voting machines by offering to pick up
95 percent of the cost. The catch, the state had to have the new machines ready
to replace about 22,000 old lever-style machines by 2006. Failure to do so
could cut New York out of about $200 million in federal aid.
Every other
state has acted.
But, with
its usual political palsy, Albany kept promising to do something as the months
and years ticked by, but never managed to cross the finish line. Several bills,
including a bill cosponsored by local Assemblywoman Barbara Lifton, have been
stalled in committee. On Tuesday, members of a special legislative panel
created to blaze this state's path into the future of voting told the media
they've decided to pass the buck. Instead of making a decision to move the
state forward together - securing the federal aid and taking the many
advantages that united action presents - lawmakers are saying they're going to
let each county decide what to do. Critics warn that a patchwork of different
systems could make statewide recounts a nightmare, just like in Florida in
2000.
So what's
the good news?
Since 2003
records show big voting machine manufacturers have pumped more than $1 billion
into lobbying the state Legislature on behalf of big, high-tech and expensive
electronic touch-screen voting machines. Called "Direct Recording
Electronic" devices, or DREs, the machine lets you interact with a
computer screen and print a paper receipt when you're done.
While the
lobbyist spent about five times more than the estimated $230 million it would
cost to buy the DRE machines just trying to get Albany to close the deal,
grassroots groups like the League of Women Voters and Alpine-based New Yorkers
for Verified Voting carried out their own counter-campaign. Their goal: Get
Albany lawmakers to consider the less expensive, if far less sexy, option of
optical scan machines.
Everyone
who's ever taken a standardized test knows how this works - you mark the boxes
on a paper ballot then send it through a machine that reads the votes. The
machine can detect errors and alert the voter, and the original hand-marked
paper ballots are kept as a permanent record should any result be questioned.
There's even a special machine that can help people with disabilities cast
votes that get printed on the same ballot and scanned by the same machine.
According to
New Yorkers for Verified Voting, it would cost about $114 million to outfit the
state with these machines. In Tompkins County alone, the savings would be about
$380,000 compared to DREs.
Critics,
even some not on the payroll of the big voting machine companies, have said the
cost of paper for ballots could make optical scan machines more expensive in
the end. Optical scan backers counter that longer service time as well as less
costly repair and operating costs make their machines less expensive in the
end. The federal offer to help is a one-time deal, they note. If the complex
DRE machines have to be fixed or replaced, state and local government will have
to foot the bill.
Fair points
to consider.
But, in
backing optical scan voting, Lifton and the other lawmakers who backed A6503 as
well as the Tompkins County Legislature when it passed Resolution No. 3 back in
January, insisted there is another point to consider as well: Only the optical
scan/paper ballot system provide the permanent verifiable record that is
essential to electoral accountability. Digits on a memory board are wonderfully
convenient, but only big boxes of hand-marked paper can be counted upon when
tight or disputed races mean every vote must be recounted.
Which brings
us back to the good news.
Whether they
meant to or not, by tossing this to the counties state lawmakers have spared us
all the billion-dollar-boondoggle we might have all been forced to eat. In that
odd way, Albany showed courage by resisting the lobbyist and at least leaving
counties with the option of fashioning their own reasonable solutions.
Of course,
they could have given counties a little more time. But, hey, we'll take any
good news out of Albany we can get.
Originally
published Friday, May 13, 2005
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