http://www.thejournalnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20060306/OPINION01/603060311/1015
So sue us
By THE JOURNAL NEWS
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original Publication: March 6, 2006)
It really is hard to figure Washington sometimes. Take the
Justice Department. It has sued New York — like the whole state — for failing
to comply with the Help America Vote Act. Talk about touchy.
HAVA was passed by Congress, made up mostly of non-New Yorkers,
four years ago. The law is supposed to help the 50 states, evidently including
New York, avoid becoming the next Florida 2000, or, in other words, a
laughingstock of the democratic world. Supporters of Al Gore and Joe Lieberman
still complain that were it not for dollar-store-quality voting machines,
voting officials' negligence and, just perhaps, outright election thievery,
their guy would have the cushy seat on Air Force One.
Really.
HAVA was supposed to make elections, you know, fair. It
allocated millions of dollars for the purchase of new voting machines, required
election venues be more accessible to people with disabilities and ordered
states to set up statewide voter-registration lists — which, as an aside, might
have come in handy in 2004, when scores of Yonkers voters were disqualified for
voting in the wrong place. This was key to deciding the tightly contested 35th
District Senate race.
For some reason, the pushy Congress set actual deadlines for
accomplishing these tasks. What they didn't do, and this is just the sort of
detail Congress often overlooks, is issue an engraved invitation to Albany
explaining that the deadlines also applied to New York. Big mistake. New York
has thus taken its sweet time complying (hence that lawsuit from the Justice
Department).
In particular, our Legislature heeded the generous advice of
the voting-machine makers and, specifically, their lobbyists, and allowed each
individual county in New York to pick its own style of voting machine. This was
only fair, as the manufacturers spent more than $1 million lobbying state
lawmakers to pick their machines. No one should go home completely
empty-handed.
But this process had meant more delays and more problems and
. . . blah, blah, blah. Bottom line: New York is "the worst," Dan
Seligson of Electionline, a national nonprofit group that monitors elections,
told our Albany bureau, "New York is now farther away from complying with
HAVA than any other state."
What's next? Some sort of settlement, no doubt. New York can't
very well jump through all of HAVA's hoops in time for the September or
November votes; there would be rioting at the polls in the event of wholesale
malfunctions. Indeed, some states, the ones that apparently received their
golden invitations, discovered in testing that their newly purchased voting
machines performed as poorly as Florida's. Their should be no, er, rush now to
new disaster with new machines (as if Albany had to be told twice).
But there's still plenty of time for Albany, even without Washington
prodding, to bolster accommodations for voters with disabilities.
Additionally, there has never been any excuse for the
state's failure to produce the statewide database or voter lists necessary for
ensuring that all eligible voters, no matter their county of residence, can be
property directed to their proper voting place. This was a big problem in the
bungled 35th Senate District vote, which took months to decide.
Both steps, we hope, would go some way toward getting
humorless Washington off our case. There's no need, after all, for New York to
be No. 1 — in the race toward Florida's election bottom.
Copyright 2006 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc.
newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York.
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