http://www.newsday.com/news/local/wire/newyork/ny-bc-ny--votingmachines1031oct31,0,5702986.story?coll=ny-region-apnewyork
Newsday
By MARC HUMBERT
AP Political Writer
October 31, 2006, 3:26 PM EST
ALBANY, N.Y. -- Already the worst in the nation for
complying with new voting standards, New York may again stretch the deadline
for counties to order new voting machines, raising new fears about whether they
will be available for next year's elections, a state official said Tuesday.
Lee Daghlian, a spokesman for the state Board of Elections,
said the board may decided at its meeting on Wednesday to push back the
required date for counties to order the machines to "late January or
sometime in February."
The deadline had already been shoved back to early January
from mid-December.
Daghlian said slower-than-expected state testing of new
machines to replace the decades old lever-action machines still used in New
York was responsible for the possible new delay.
The state board spokesman said that even with the new delay,
New York could possibly make the state-mandated 2007 election deadline for the
new machines.
"But if it keeps getting lengthened we might not make
it," Daghlian said.
Bo Lipari, a representative of the League of Women Voters on
a state advisory panel dealing with replacing voting machines, was less
optimistic than Daghlian.
"A delay like this probably puts the nail in the coffin
for replacing lever machines in 2007," said Lipari, who is also executive
director of New Yorkers for Verified Voting.
New York has been slower than all other states in complying
with the federal Help America Vote Act adopted in the wake of the disputed 2000
presidential election. The U.S. Justice Department sued New York earlier this
year to force it to install new voting machines for the disabled and compile
statewide voter registration lists in time for this year's elections. A court
settlement was negotiated to bring New York into compliance.
Nonetheless, state officials are also facing a state-adopted
law requiring that the lever-action machines still being used by voters this
year be replaced by the 2007 election.
Also at issue is about $50 million already received by the
state in federal aid to help pay for the voter system upgrade. State officials
have asked federal officials not to require the return of those funds.
Copyright 2006 Newsday Inc.