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Tuesday February 28, 2006

NEWS

New Chenango voting machines won't be ready by fall

By JIM KOZUBEK

Correspondent

The Chenango County Board of Elections will replace its lever-pull voting machines with electronic or optical scan machines, but the new machines will not be in place for this fall's election.

"There is still a lot of work to do," elections board member Harriet Jenkins said.

State officials also said Monday it is virtually impossible to have the electronic machines ready in time, meaning voters across the state will continue to use the lever-style machines.

The change to a new system was mandated by the federal Help America Vote Act, passed following the hanging-chads controversy in Florida's punch-card voting system during the 2000 presidential race.

HAVA initially required all states to replace lever and punch-card voting systems with more advanced systems by the federal election in 2004.

But logistical obstacles caused the federal government to give states a one-time waiver that extended the deadline to the first federal election in 2006.

Commissioners said Monday the new machines can't be certified any earlier than June, leaving too little time for counties to purchase the machines and train workers.

New York must replace 22,000 lever-style machines.

The official position of the Federal Board of Elections is that HAVA money, already in states' hands, will be recovered by the federal government if the fall deadline is not met.

The federal government has allocated $220 million to New York state, including $846,000 for Chenango County, to implement the legislation.

State officials object to the federal deadlines, which they say are unrealistic.

The Elections Assistance Commission took 18 months to set-up and was never organized in a timely way to provide states with the tools to implement the program, said Robert Brehm, New York's deputy director of pubic information.

"We need time to improve and modernize our voting system, to deliver and deploy machines that are tested and vetted to guarantee accurate elections, to meet standards and develop the educational components in a way that won't disenfranchise voters," Brehm said.

Gannett News Service contributed to this report.