http://www

http://www.newsday.com/news/opinion/ny-vpbra253467731sep25,0,3861949.story?coll=ny-opinion-archive

Election Reform in New York Is a Tough Call

By Kathleen Brady (Ms. Brady is a fellow of the Society of American Historians and is a biographer of Ida Tarbell and Lucille Ball)

September 25, 2003

While the media focus on the issue of nonpartisan elections in New York City, the citizens are in danger of losing their voting rights. It is indeed significant that the Democratic Party might lose its right to hold a city primary under the charter referendum on the Nov. 4 ballot. Republican Mayor Michael Bloomberg says this is to the good because most city elections are decided in the Democratic primary, which shuts out Republican and third-party voters.

But in stressing the issue's political implications for Bloomberg, the media are ignoring or soft-pedaling reports that Gov. George Pataki is undermining and corrupting the State Board of Elections in ways that could hurt every New York City voter.

Pataki's treatment of State Elections Commissioner Carol Berman is a case in point. Last April, in accordance with state law, Democratic leaders nominated her to a sixth term. By tradition, governors appoint a nominee regardless of party, but for six months Pataki has refused to act on her appointment, preventing the four-member board from functioning properly. Now there are just two Republican commissioners and one Democrat.

Some nine months after giving notice, executive director Thomas R. Wilkey, a Democrat, left the board in August. A new director cannot be appointed without the full board's approval, so Republican deputy executive director Peter S. Kosinski has taken over Wilkey's duties, effectively removing another Democrat from the board. Yesterday the board met in Albany but didn't conduct more than a pro forma meeting.

This gum-up happens as New York and other states are supposed to be implementing the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which passed in October 2002 in response to the public outcry over ongoing ballot irregularities in Florida. HAVA allots some $3.9 billion dollars (the cost of keeping the military in Iraq for about a month) to the 50 states to increase voter registration, establish central data bases of voters, and to purchase computerized voting equipment.

Although the State Board of Elections was the proper entity to deal with HAVA, Pataki took it upon himself to set up a task force using board letterhead and staff. He named Kosinski chairman, bypassing Wilkey, who is so knowledgeable about HAVA that other states have called him in to consult. Over the summer, Kosinski held three poorly publicized hearings about the vague plan it produced in advance of public comment. Then, before Labor Day, he submitted his plan to the Federal Elections Commission.

The state task force fudged issues key to city voters. It did not specify requirements for voter identification or what kinds of new machines would be purchased. Requiring driver's licenses as identification would work against city residents, some 60 percent of whom do not drive, according to one estimate. The panel also dodged the issue of foreign-language ballots, which are essential to ensuring accurate voting in immigrant neighborhoods.

As state balloting problems threaten, city residents are learning that thousands of their votes may not have been properly counted since 1962 when "sensor latches" were disabled from voting machines that are still in use today. Enabling the latches requires a 10-minute adjustment with a screwdriver, but city election officials say that doing that would be too problematic and might trigger other errors in the temperamental machines.

The Brennan Center for Justice at New York University Law School is suing the city board to correct the problem. The city board says it will print multi-lingual fliers to explain how to vote with the old machines in the coming election. It clearly anticipates that HAVA funds will help provide for new machines. But $68 million from HAVA is languishing in the state comptroller's office because Democratic legislators refuse to approve their use until Berman is reappointed.

But even new voting machines may not be a panacea for city elections. Computer scientists at Johns Hopkins point out that computerized ballot boxes are subject to viruses and can be programmed to work against proper recording and counting.

Other signs are not promising for fair and balanced elections. In Ohio, Republican Walden O'Dell, chairman of Diebold Corp., a major manufacturer of U.S. voting machines, is actively working for the re-election of George W. Bush. A Johns Hopkins University study uncovered significant security flaws in Diebold's voting software. Diebold defends its products and denies that O'Dell's Republican partisanship affects the firm's operation. Nebraska Republican Sen. Chuck Hagel is an owner of E S & S, the largest voting-machine manufacturer in the nation. It counted votes in Hagel's successful elections. So city voters will have to be vigilant about the new machines - if they ever arrive.

Surely, most Republicans want to win elections honestly. Certainly, history records that Democratic leaders also have been unscrupulous, but that is no reason to allow George Pataki to become today's stealth version of Boss Tweed. If Republicans win squeaker elections here, people may begin to doubt the democratic process. That hasn't mattered yet. But by the time it does, the city could well be neutralized. Maybe that is the idea.