http://www.troyrecord.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=16667919&BRD=1170&PAG=461&dept_id=7021&rfi=15
05/20/2006
By: Shawn Charniga, The Record
TROY - One of two Sequoia lever-type voting machines
stationed at School 18 for Tuesday's budget vote and Board of Education runoff
broke after two votes were cast for candidate Ilene Clinton, and all subsequent
votes for her went unrecorded, the Rensselaer County Board of Elections
discovered Friday.
Clinton, a newcomer who ended the night with 567 votes, was
the second-highest vote-getter on the other School 18 machine.
The Board of Education voted 5-4 Wednesday to certify the
election, but allowed a check of the machines. At least some Clinton supporters
are calling for a new election, at least in the affected district, but others,
including the incumbent school board president who eked out a narrow victory,
say it's time to move on.
The machines are between 40 and 50 years old and are owned
by the city and rented by the school district. Elections Commissioner Larry
Bugbee, one of those who discovered the machine was broken, attributes the
breakdown to old age.
When not in use, the 235 machines are stored in the city's
Department of Public Works garage, which Bugbee describes as a "huge
warehouse-type building and probably not prime conditions, not like being
stored in your house."
Prior to the vote all machines were found to be functional
and received their annual checkup about a week ago, Bugbee said. However, after
the second Clinton vote was cast the component simply gave up the ghost, a
breakdown that could change the school board's makeup radically if the vote is
successfully challenged.
Breakdowns are rare, according to the commissioner, but with
270 rollers - each similar to the odometer rollers in an automobile dashboard -
in each machine, there are thousands of opportunities for malfunction, he said.
"It's like getting hit by lightning - it doesn't happen
very often, but it happens," Bugbee said. "It has happened in the
past, but it has never happened where it would make a difference" in an
outcome. Others may have occurred but escaped notice, he said, calling the
possible effect on Clinton's final tally glaring.
Last fall, another of the city machines experienced a
similar failure during a runoff between county Legislature incumbent Peter
Durkee and a Democratic challenger who ended the night victorious because,
allegedly, some Durkee votes were not recorded due to a similar malfunction.
Bugbee said the attorney general is the only party who can
call for a new election under those circumstances but did not know who may
order new school board elections.
District Superintendent Lonnie Palmer said Clinton could
appeal the results and certification to state Education Department Commissioner
Richard Mills and present evidence, perhaps including a petition or affidavit
from persons who believe their votes were not recorded.
The margin between Clinton and the next-highest vote-getter
was 95, and 114 votes for her candidacy were recorded on the functioning School
18 machine, Palmer said.
Clinton says she wishes the board had waited to certify the
results until after the machine was definitively tested and suggests the five
who favored certification, including incumbent board President Michael Pollack
who finished 95 votes ahead of Clinton, did so in hopes of keeping Pollack on
the board.
"I would hope that the board would take action and call
for another election," she said, citing a perceived moral and ethical
obligation to correct the skew created by the broken machine. If the board does
not act, Clinton says she will file the names and addresses of those who voted
on the broken machine with state Attorney General Eliot Spitzer and the state
Education Department.
ŠThe Record 2006
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