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TheJournalNews.com
The online information source for Westchester, Rockland and
Putnam
By SARAH NETTER
THE JOURNAL NEWS
September 2, 2005
Now that New Yorkers will no longer be pulling levers at the
polls, counties must decide how its residents will cast their votes and
Rockland is researching the options.
A special election oversight committee, put together by the
county Legislature, will meet Sept. 8 for a presentation on optical scanner
voting machines, which electronically tally paper ballots.
Gov. George Pataki signed legislation July 12 that gives
counties the jurisdiction to choose their own voting machines from a yet-to-be
released list of state-approved machines.
Legislator Denise Kronstadt, D-Piermont, who heads the
12-member Special Committee on Election Modernization Oversight, said she
wanted the county to look at several types of machines that could be included
on the state's list.
"Voting and voting machines are a very basic part of
our democratic process," Kronstadt said. "We need to view everything
to decide what's best for the county."
The move toward new voting machines is part of the 2002
federal Help America Vote Act to fund and enforce new voting standards. The new
machines must be in place by the first federal election of 2006.
Vendors have demonstrated six machines, including an optical
scanner, in the Board of Elections office this summer. The Sept. 8 presentation
will give a more detailed look at the machine's capabilities, Kronstadt said.
The optical scanner reads paper ballots. Each voter is given
a sheet with blank "bubbles" next to each candidate or question.
Voters fill in the bubble of their choice, then the machine scans the sheets,
which drop into a locked box.
Kronstadt said she hoped to have the same type of
presentation for the other machines.
Bo Lipari of the grass-roots group New Yorkers for Verified
Voting is an advocate of the optical scanners and will be the presenter Sept.
8. Lipari said he and his organization do not support Direct Recording
Electronic voting machines, which use touch screens to cast votes.
The other five machines examined by the county have been
DREs.
Lipari said the paper trail left by DREs, a requirement
under state law, was inadequate and that computers don't always work properly.
"It's a technology that really cannot guarantee our
right to vote," he said.
Committee member Bill Mullin, an advocate with the Rockland
Independent Living Center, has been in a wheelchair for more than two decades.
His spinal injury prevents him from reaching the levers on the older voting
machines so he needs to have someone in the voting booth with him.
Mullin said he was hoping the county would use touch-screen
machines, which would give him the opportunity to vote in private for the first
time in 26 years.
The optical scanner machines, he said, would give him
trouble because he needs a special instrument to write.
Legislature Chairwoman Harriet Cornell said she hoped the
committee's research would put an end to frustrations like those of disabled
voters.
"The purpose is to have fair elections where every vote
is tallied, where there is no confusion on the part of those who vote,"
she said.
Board of Elections Commissioner Ann Marie Kelly, who will
make the decision on the county voting machines, along with fellow Commissioner
Joan Silvestri, said she personally preferred DREs.
The county has used optical scanner machines for years to
count absentee ballots, she said, and they have their share of problems, such
as when two ballots stick together.
Touch screens, she said, are familiar to voters who
routinely use them at places like ATMs.
Copyright 2005 The Journal News, a Gannett Co. Inc.
newspaper serving Westchester, Rockland and Putnam Counties in New York.
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