New York asked to reject ATM-style voting machines
By KYLE MILLER. Legislative Gazette Staff Writer September 24, 2007

As the New York State Board of Elections is expected to start the bidding for contracts with voting machine manufacturers, good-government groups last week made another attempt to keep touch-screen voting devices out of the state.

Direct Recording Electronic voting machines, or DREs, are unfit for providing access to disabled voters, argues Bo Lipari, executive director of New Yorkers for Verified Voting.

Lipari was part of a panel of advocates who pointed out the potential problems they say would result from the state using such machines as ballot counters - most importantly, they don't leave any kind of "trail" to verify how votes were cast.

According to Lipari, DREs - which operate much like ATM machines - use a "voter verified paper audit trail" as the ballot, which has no scanning and audio verification component.

"How does a voter with visual disabilities verify that the contents of that ballot are correct?" Lipari asked. "There is no way to do it."

On August 28, the Board of Elections proposed to allow DREs in polling places in 2008. The state is attempting to comply with the 2002 Help America Vote Act, which set national accessibility standards for voting and required all states to implement electronic ballot systems. For the 2006 elections, New York state installed one Ballot Marking Device, or BMD, in every county. These machines print out a marked ballot that can then be scanned and read back over audio, allowing the voter to correct any discrepancies. Lipari says this was a step in the right direction that should be expanded instead of allowing DREs to function as ballot markers.

"This is a backdoor effort to get failed touch screen voting technologies into our polling places," he said, accusing the Board of Elections of hastily moving to accept the machines without proper testing.

Lipari and company were especially critical of Board of Elections Co-Executive Director Peter Kosinski's statement that the DREs in question would be subjected to a "truncated certification process." The board of elections did not return a phone call in time for publication.

"The board is saying 'oh don't worry, when we finish the full certification process and if the DRE is not certified, then we will not be able to use it in later years,'" said NYPIRG Legislative Counsel Russ Haven. "Once the counties have spent multiple millions of dollars... does anyone seriously believe that next year, the state board will say, 'sorry, you can't use them because they didn't pass our test?'"

League of Women Voters Elections Specialist Aimee Allaud was also on hand to advocate the use of optical scanning devices. The league has been a longtime proponent of BMDs, even pushing for legislation last February to make them mandatory for the whole state.

"Scanners are a proven technology, and you've heard us say that for the last three years," Allaud said. She also said the devices are cost-effective, claiming that one machine costs between $5,000 and $6,000, as opposed to a DRE, which can cost about $10,000.

However, the higher price of DREs, Lipari believes, is also a motivator for the companies that sell them.

"Here in New York state, if you look at multiple millions of dollars that vendors have spent lobbying... it's clear that there is an agenda on the part of the vendors to sell the more profitable touch-screen voting machines," he said.

DREs are ATM-like machines that the panelists said are intended for use in vote-counting, not for direct voting. The New Yorkers for Verified Voting press conference featured a map of the U.S. highlighting states that experienced mismatched printouts, ink and paper shortages and paper jams with their touch-screen voting systems.

"The board would allow DREs to create a paper trail that would essentially be the ballot," explained Haven. "As you know from your ATM experience, that kind of heat-sensitive paper... that's not exactly a good paper trail."

Allaud said that only about 1,000 people in New York voted on a BMD last election, so the machines are still too new here to have a proven track record. However, she said other states have had success with scanning devices, pointing to Michigan's use of the Automark system.

Cliff Perez, systems advocate for the Independent Living Center of the Hudson Valley, was a bit more cautious about the limits of BMDs.

"The ballot marking machine has great potential to be made much more accessible than the DRE but they do require some work," he said. "We still need to make sure that the optical scanner can give different information for people who are blind to know that, when they put the paper in, the information is all correct."

Lipari mentioned that New Mexico, Maryland, and Florida are considering abandoning their multimillion-dollar investments in the machines.

"The financial investments now will ultimately drive the decisions for the technology that we have to use for the next generation or two," said Haven. "We don't want the money that we invest now to be a temporary fix to a long-term decision."

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Groups find fault with state's plan to comply with federal voting law
By Cara Matthews, Gannett News Service


ALBANY -- Good-government groups and advocates for the disabled today criticized a state proposal to require ATM-style voting machines for people with disabilities next year, the latest controversy in New York's long and winding road to compliance with federal election law.

Representatives of voting rights organizations said the state Board of Elections is considering a plan to authorize an abbreviated certification process for the new machines so they would be in place next fall. The machines, which would be altered to meet accessibility requirements, wouldn't give the disabled an acceptable method of verifying the accuracy of their votes, they said. The board is scheduled to discuss the matter Thursday.


"This is not a move by the state board to provide enhanced accessibility because, as you'll see, these devices do not provide the best accessibility," said Bo Lipari, executive director of New Yorkers for Verified Voting, which, along with other advocacy groups, opposes the use of touch-screen voting machines. "This is an attempt to get failed touch-screen voting technology into New York's polling places without the testing that was promised and demanded by the public."

Board of Elections spokesman Lee Daghlian said the agency does not favor one type of technology over another. Besides touch-screen machines for the disabled, the board is discussing having counties obtain more ballot-marking devices, he said. Counties used them last year to ensure voting was accessible to people with disabilities, meaning they could cast their votes without assistance. There was at least one per county, but in 2008, counties will need to have one at each polling site.

"We have no particular interest in what type of machine they use," Daghlian said.

Replacing the state's 20,000 or so lever voting machines is one of New York's responsibilities under the federal Help America Vote Act, passed in the wake of severe ballot-counting problems in the 2000 presidential election. Its purpose is to update voting systems and improve accessibility for people with disabilities. New York received $222 million in federal funds to implement the act.

New York was supposed to have new voting machines for everyone by September 2006. The U.S. Department of Justice sued in March 2006 because the state missed multiple deadlines for implementing HAVA. The Justice Department is closely monitoring New York's progress under a settlement agreement, and the Board of Elections has to submit a plan by the end of the month on how it will bring New York into compliance with the law.


The Board of Elections fell behind even more this year when it suspended testing of machines because of problems with the contractor. The contract for a new vendor has been held up in a review process by other state agencies. Counties ultimately will choose what they want from a list of machines certified by the contractor. The earliest the state would be in compliance with HAVA is 2009.

The two main types of voting machines under consideration are optical-scan ballot devices, in which voters mark ballots (either by hand or with the assistance of ballot-marking devices) and they are scanned in. The other is direct-recording electronic voting machines, most of which are touch-screen machines. Optical-scan machines are $5,000 or $6,000 each, and touch-screen machines are about $10,000 each, according to Lipari.

Lipari's group, the League of Women Voters, the New York Public Interest Research Group, the Independent Living Center of the Hudson Valley and other organizations argued against direct-recording electronic voting machines in a letter sent to the Board of Elections this week. Their objections include:

-- The ballot, which is behind a screen, cannot be read back or verified by the voter in any way other than by direct visual observation. "If you have a visual impairment, perhaps a person with a learning disability, (you're) not going to be able to verify that piece of paper to see whether or not indeed that's who they voted for," said Cliff Perez of the Independent Living Center of the Hudson Valley.

-- Such machines have not worked out in states like California, New Jersey, Washington, Utah, Ohio, Illinois, Arkansas and North Carolina. Among the problems have been printing failures and paper jams.

Daghlian said the state wouldn't certify a machine that didn't meet all the state's requirements for operability, accuracy and reliability.

County elections commissioners have expressed concerns that machines they purchase now may not be acceptable to use in the long term.

The Election Commissioners' Association of New York State does not currently have a position on the use of touch-screen voting machines, known as direct recording electronic machines, versus ballot-marking devices, said Norman Green, president of the group and Democratic elections commissioner in Chautauqua County. The group does not think it would be feasible to have a touch-screen or ballot-marking device at every polling place in 2008, he said.