http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/21/nyregion/21vote.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

The New York Times

June 21, 2006

 

A Chance to Mark the Ballot by Puffing Through a Straw

By SEWELL CHAN

 

For the first time, New York City residents will be able to vote by "puffing" and "sipping" air through a straw, pumping a foot pedal, touching a computer screen or pressing flat plastic shapes — two triangles, a circle and a square — affixed to the four corners of a specially configured keyboard.

 

These new methods, which represent the biggest innovation in the city's voting technologies since the Shoup mechanical-lever machine was introduced in 1962, are a temporary measure intended to help disabled people vote.

 

The new voting methods are the product of a lawsuit from the federal government. They will be used in the Sept. 12 primary and the Nov. 7 general election as an interim step to comply with a new federal requirement that voting machines be accessible to the disabled.

 

The new voting methods can be used on 22 ballot-marking devices that will be available at one site in each of the five boroughs. It is an imperfect compromise: by placing the machines at centrally located offices, the city is essentially requiring some of the least mobile voters to travel the longest distances to vote. And because it can take up to 40 minutes to cast a vote using the new machines, voters may find themselves waiting in long lines.

 

The devices are not actual voting machines; they cannot record votes, but merely generate a printed ballot on a sheet of white paper. The voter, with help from a poll worker if necessary, would then place the ballot in an envelope. The ballot would then be counted by hand, along with other paper ballots, including absentee ballots, on Election Day or shortly after.

 

John Ravitz, the executive director of the city's Board of Elections, gave a presentation yesterday on voting reform to members of a mayoral task force on modernizing elections and later oversaw a demonstration of the new devices to members of the board and the public, including several disabled residents.

 

In March, the Justice Department sued New York State for failing to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002, which called on the states to overhaul their voting systems. In May, after both sides acknowledged that the state could not overhaul its entire system in time for this year's elections, they agreed on a compliance plan that required each county to provide a limited number of voting machines that are fully accessible to the disabled for this year's elections.

 

The city bought 27 ballot-marking devices from Avante International Technology of Princeton Junction, N.J. The company is also providing the devices to 32 of the 57 counties in New York State outside New York City.

 

By next year, the state must have fully accessible voting machines in every polling place statewide — including the 1,369 in New York City. The state Board of Elections, which must approve new voting systems, has not yet done so, and so the city must wait before selecting its new voting technology.

 

The new ballot-marking devices will be available in each of the board's five borough offices: 5 each in Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens; 4 in the Bronx; and 3 in Staten Island. (Three devices will be used in demonstrations, and two internally.) Before the September primary, the board will mail information about the devices to the city's 4.3 million registered voters.

 

Some advocates for the disabled said they were not fully satisfied. "I'm sorry we're having to go ahead with this interim plan," said Alexander Wood, executive director of the Disabilities Network of New York City, which represents people with motor and sensory disabilities. "I would have liked to see us hold out for a solution that accommodates all disenfranchised voters. This is a separate system, not an equal system."

 

Mr. Wood, a paraplegic who uses a wheelchair, noted that it could take up to 40 minutes for a disabled voter to cast a ballot using the new device. Many disabled voters will have to listen to a long recorded announcement with instructions — and the contents of the ballot — before they can vote.

 

Terrence C. O'Connor, a Queens Democrat who holds the rotating presidency of the 10-member city Board of Elections, conceded that the new device could be cumbersome. "It's the best it could be under the circumstances," he said.

 

Copyright 2006 The New York Times Company