http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-0/113515813470371.xml&coll=1
The Post-Standard
Wednesday, December 21, 2005
ERIK KRISS
ALBANY NOTEBOOK
Voting activists took the state Board of Elections to task
recently for what they called woefully inadequate proposed regulations for new
voting machines.
The League of Women Voters and New Yorkers for Verified
Voting claim the regulations would let new machine manufacturers apply their
own testing standards.
Federal law requires New York to replace its lever-style
voting machines before the federal 2006 elections.
To comply, the state adopted its own law giving elections
commissioners in each county a choice between electronic touch-screen machines
and optical scanners that read paper ballots.
The league and the verified voting group favor the optical
scanners and claimed during testimony at a board-sponsored public hearing in
Albany last Friday that the proposed regulations are tilted in favor of the
touch-screen machines.
The league'sAimee Allaud said the regulations would give
machine vendors most of whom have pushed the touch-screen devices the power to
determine what information to provide to satisfy performance standards.
The vendors could waive state machine testing requirements
if they submit reports that verify performance "in a manner equivalent to
the board's examination requirements."
"Government, not vendors, must be in control of our system
of voting," she said.
She also said the regulations require notification of
machine testing only to political parties and candidates.
"What about citizens?" Allaud asked. "Shame
on the board for not recognizing that their first responsibility is to the
citizens of New York state."
Bo Lipari, a retired software engineer who heads up New
Yorkers for Verified Voting, said that "with lax standards such as these,
a vendor could force New York state to certify their machine, as has happened
in the past."
The first public hearing on the proposed regulations was
Dec. 13 in Rochester; another took place Tuesday in New York City and one more
is scheduled in Putnam County Jan. 12.
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Erik Kriss' Albany Notebook appears Sunday and Wednesday in
The Post-Standard. He can be reached at (518) 463-8038 or by e-mail at
erikriss@aol.com
© 2005 The Post-Standard.
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