New Voting Machine Options Concern Citizens

November 21, 2006

New York is the last state to update its voting machines to comply with new a new federal law, and time is running out. As NY1's Molly Kroon reports, critics are warning that New York could be poised to make the same mistakes that have caused election glitches around the country.

"We are doing the best we can," said John Ravitch of the NYC Board of Elections. "We are not sitting on our hands and waiting."

But many at Tuesday's public hearing say more can be done, especially when it comes to ensuring all votes will be counted when the new machines are introduced.

"The integrity of our voting process must be preserved," said a concerned citizen.

The city's Board of Elections is poised to decide between two kinds of electronic machines. One is called an optical scan. It's a lot like an SAT or lottery ticket where voters would fill it out and feed it into a machine.

The other is called a DRE, where voters touch a screen much like an ATM. Sounds easy enough, but many at the hearing blasted them. According to a Brennan Center Study, also out Tuesday, more than 15 percent of votes placed on DRE machines in other states have been lost because of voter confusion.

"These results alone should be sounding the death knell for DRE machines," said Neil Rosenstein of the New York Public Interest Research Group.

But city officials say all the machines they're considering have internal paper trails to secure votes. They say the city's investigating any problems other states have had.

"We are hearing the horror stories and reaching out to those election administrators in those municipalities and asking, 'Is this fact or fiction?'" said Ravitch.

Voting rights advocates also want the city and state to look into the possibility of hacking into the systems and any other computer glitches that could hurt an election. But time is tight. The federal guidelines require the machines be up and running by the September primary, but the state recently announced it was pushing back the date the city could order the machines, leading Mayor Michael Bloomberg to fire off a blistering letter to the state saying the city would have to forfeit $20 million in federal funds if it misses the deadline.

"It's been very frustrating," said Ravitch.

Another big frustration for the city is knowing how many machines to order and at what cost to taxpayers. In terms of the timeline, the city will make its decision by February and hope to have the machines by this spring. Then it's a mad rush to train thousands of poll worker on how to use the new machines.

- Molly Kroon