Jane E. Colvin

January 29, 2007

Thank you for holding this hearing. My name is Jane Colvin and I am a member of the League of Women Voters and a registered voter in Manhattan.

I am here to urge you to pass Resolution 131 out of committee for a vote by the city Council. It is appropriate for this body to urge our City Board of Elections to select Paper Ballots and Optical Scanner machines, not DREs.

I went to the voting machine demonstrations in Queens and the Bronx in November, 2006, and listened carefully.

The demonstrations were impressive; the DRE voting machines, however, were not.

Compared to the DRE system, the PBOS system is:

• Economically superior
• Easier for poll workers to support, and
• Easier to find and correct errors.

I believe that others will address the issues of ease of use and accuracy. I would like to emphasize the advantageous economics of the PBOS system.

On a strictly economic basis the PBOS system is a low-cost winner. Financially, it

• costs much less than DREs to purchase
• costs proportionately less to use and maintain
• costs less for poll worker training, and
• lasts 15-20 years vs. 5-10 years for the DREs

The PBOS system is economical in another important respect:

• Because voters require less time to use the scanner, it can serve more voters that a DRE.
• As a result, fewer machines will be required to replace the lever machines.
• This means that with the PBOS system, New York City
• will be able to continue using our current polling places
• will spend less for purchasing and maintaining the machines

I urge you to examine cost information from the web site www.ncvoter.net. Their report entitled Operating Cost Comparison for Different Types of Voting Systems provides a comparison of total annual expenditures for touch screens and optical scanners in North Carolina, demonstrating the economy of the PBOS system from a state that has experience with both kinds of voting equipment.

Thank you for your attention.