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Monday March 6, 2006

ALBANY ANGLE

New York's new motto: 'Dead last and defiant'

JAY GALLAGHER

Albany Angle

ALBANY - For a state government trying to shed a "dysfunctional" label, a federal lawsuit last week pointing out that New York is dead last in updating its election system represents a significant setback.

The U.S. Justice Department filed suit against the state, to try to get it to comply with the four-year-old Help America Vote Act, which is supposed to streamline voting procedures. Congress passed the measure in 2002, in the wake of the 2000 presidential-election debacle in Florida.

The most important provisions of the law would provide new voting machines, more accessible to the handicapped, and set up a statewide voter-registration list to fight fraud while making sure everyone who is eligible gets to vote.

While the process hasn't gone smoothly in all states, many had new machines and lists ready for 2004 elections. Some have been slower, finding that machines ordered haven't worked properly.

Where does New York rank?

"The worst," said Dan Seligson of Electionline, a national non-profit group that monitors elections. "New York state is now farther away from complying with HAVA than any other state."

New Yorkers have heard "the worst" applied to their state government before. In 2004, the Brennan Center for Justice, a think tank affiliated with New York University, called the New York Legislature the nation's "most dysfunctional."

That study found that New York lawmakers virtually never seriously debated bills on the floor or even considered them in committee and also almost never rejected a bill. It was also the only Legislature in the country that allowed lawmakers to vote without being in their seats. Then there was the matter of not passing a budget by the start of the fiscal year for 20 years in a row - by far the longest streak in the country.

That report sparked enough of an outcry so that last year lawmakers now actually have to be present to vote in most instances. Some issues, including the budget, are debated in public instead of behind closed doors and the budget was passed on time. (Almost everyone gave them a mulligan for actually finishing about a week later when the last $1 billion in spending was decided on.) But if those actions were a step away from dysfunction, certainly the sorry history of the HAVA deliberations is a leap the other way. What happened?

First, Republican Gov. George E. Pataki put the No. 2 official at the state Board of Elections, Republican Peter Kosinski, in charge of the process, bypassing the top official, Democrat Thomas Wilkey. That action set the partisan tone for the issue right from the beginning.

Then it was the Legislature's turn. The partisan split was evident early on. Republicans were most eager to make sure that people who weren't registered to vote didn't cast a ballot. Democrats, on the other hand, wanted to assure than no one who was registered was turned away from the polls. The marginal voters, mostly poor and largely minority, are overwhelmingly Democratic.

Last year lawmakers finally agreed on a wide array of proper IDs, with enough safeguards so that so that the chance of fraud was reduced.

Then when it came time to look at which machines to buy, high-powered lobbyists entered the fray. The fight was between the lobbyists who wanted the state to buy the more expensive ATM-like machines and good-government groups who thought the simpler optical-scan machines were the way to go.

The Legislature never did resolve that issue - it decided instead to pass the buck to the counties that now will have to pick their own machines.

But first the state elections board has to make sure that machines the counties are allowed to buy actually work. They're still working on that.

So New York might actually benefit from being so slow and get it right the first time. But based on the history of this voting-machine debacle so far, don't bet on it.

Gallagher is the Albany bureau chief for Gannett.

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