Wanda Warren Berry’s Summary of main points from interview of Douglas A. Kellner, Co-Chair of NY State Board of Elections (SBOE), “Voice of the Voters” on Jan. 9, 2007.

• Kellner reported that the Department of Justice had asked the state Board of Elections to develop more specific dates and benchmarks in their plan for implementing the replacement of lever machines in 2009. The implication was that the DoJ and the Judge would accept the deferral of that replacement until 2009.
• The state Board yesterday evening submitted a revision of the plan that would meet the DoJ request.
• Kellner talked about the great difficulty of meeting the schedule for placing a ballot marking device (BMD) in each polling place for September 2008 and for replacing the levers in 2009. But he also noted that “we all have had a long time to get prepared to these changes.”
• He said that on January 23 the SBOE will notify counties of the BMDs that are approved for their consideration. This will follow a preliminary review of the bids that looks for problems in the device’s capacity to fulfill basic NY State requirements.
• The SBOE will ask for the counties to register their preferences for a BMD by mid-February. Meanwhile technical tests of the BMDs will take place.
• Any machines that do not pass these tests may be withdrawn. In the long run, he said vendors would be responsible if machines were purchased that were not finally certified.
• Kellner emphasized that counties should choose in relation to their expected permanent system for replacing the levers.
• Full certification of machines for replacing the levers is expected by August.
• Kellner also wanted to get the message out that DREs (1) are more expensive for counties than the paper ballot scanner system, and (2) that counties need to note how much more difficult it will be to carry out the state-law-required 3% audit with DRE paper trails.
• In response to questions, Commissioner Kellner said that he expects at least two DREs to apply for use as ballot marking devices: the Avante and the Liberty machines. Each has claimed to be ready to submit machines which produce full-face ballots. Bo Lipari noted that these modifications will not have solved the fundamental problems with DREs that have been recognized across the country. Kellner said that the SBOE was directed by the state legislation to allow both kinds of systems.
• Kellner specifically named four machines that he expects will apply for use as BMDs. There may be more.:

- two different versions of the AutoMARK,

- Dominion-Sequoia “Image Cast,”

- Avante DRE and

- Liberty DRE

WWB concluding remarks: It seems clear that for counties that choose the paper ballot scanner system, the choice of a BMD in the next few weeks will determine the scanners to replace the levers. We think the versions of the AutoMARK are different for the ES&S scanner and for the Premier/Diebold scanner. The “Image Cast” BMD is tied to the Dominion-Sequoia scanner.

It seems less and less likely that the SBOE will refuse certification to machines for replacing the levers if a great deal of our HAVA funds already have been spent on them.