ARTICLE FROM THE PRESS REPUBLICAN PUBLISHED FEBRUARY 08, 2008
Clinton and Essex Counties to purchase similar voting machines
North Country makes deadline for choosing new voting machines
By JOE LoTEMPLIO,
Staff Writers
LOHR McKINSTRY
and DENISE RAYMO
PLATTSBURGH -- North Country voters will be casting their votes on new machines in November, ending the era of the clunky old lever machines.
Clinton, Essex and Franklin counties all chose new machines by Friday's deadline, as mandated by federal laws.
Each county chose the Image Cast optical-scan unit from Sequoia Voting Systems.
The Sequoia machine has a paper ballot that asks voters to fill in the ovals for their candidate then feed the document into the machine, which verifies that the person filled out the ballot correctly before it is officially recorded.
If a mistake is made, the voided ballot is shunted to a locked box, and a fresh ballot is given to the voter to fill out.
"Every ballot must be accounted for," said Franklin County Republican Elections Commissioner Veronica King said.
The Sequoia machine was chosen over all-electronic versions. The fear among elections commissioners about electronic machines was that data could be wiped out completely, with no paper trail if a problem arose.
Essex County Republican Elections Commissioner Lewis Sanders had recommended different machines from Liberty, but a deal was brokered between him and Democratic Commissioner David Mace by County Attorney Daniel Manning III.
Clinton County is purchasing 45 new Sequoia machines, Franklin County is buying 32, and Essex County is getting 30.
The cost is being covered by federal funds.
The new machines will replace the mechanical-lever voting machines that have been in use since the 1930s.
The change was mandated by the federal Help America Vote Act, which was approved after the debacle of the 2000 presidential election in Florida.
Election officials in Florida had major problems counting ballots after that election, and the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately had to decide who won the presidency.
The new Sequoia machines are designed to preserve voting privileges for all people, no matter their disability. They include audio and visual components and have the ability to turn to ensure the voter's privacy while casting a ballot.
jlotemplio@pressrepublican.com
Independent Living Center of the Hudson Valley
League of Women Voters of New York State
New York Public Interest Research Group, NYPIRG
New Yorkers for Verified Voting
News Release
For Immediate Release
For more information contact:
Bo Lipari: 607-351-2314
Aimee Allaud: 518-482-2617
Neal Rosenstein 917 575-4317
Wednesday, September 19, 2007
State Board of Elections Must Not Allow
Untested DREs into New York's Polling Places
Citizen advocacy organizations announced opposition to the New York State Board of Elections proposal to allow touch screen voting machines, or DREs, in polling places in 2008. The groups expressed grave concerns about the Board's proposal to allow DREs to be used as accessible ballot marking devices in 2008 by disabling the device's vote counting functions and using the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) as the ballot. In August, at a meeting of the State Board of Elections and county commissioners, Co-Executive Director Peter Kosinski stated that DREs used for this purpose would be subjected to a "truncated certification process."
The groups strongly support implementing accessible voting in all New York polling places in 2008 but are opposed to any plan that allows DREs to be used as accessible voting machines.
"The League of Women Voters supports the goal of fully accessible voting for all people, but using uncertified, untested and inaccessible equipment does not bring that goal any closer to being met," said Aimee Allaud, Elections Specialist, NYS League of Women Voters. She added, "voting machines used by all voters should be treated equally during the NYS mandated certification process and subjected to the same performance standards for their security, accuracy and reliability."
"Citizens with disabilities just want to exercise their right to vote on an accessible, secure, and verifiable voting system - the same as all other citizens." said Cliff Perez, Systems Advocate with the Independent Living Center of the Hudson Valley. "But voters with visual impairments cannot verify a VVPAT produced by a DRE."
"'The State Board of Elections apparently is looking to sneak untested DREs into every polling site across the state in the guise of allowing them to temporarily function as "Ballot Markers" -- machines that are designed to help voters mark and print out a paper ballot,'" said NYPIRG Legislative Counsel, Russ Haven. "Like the residents of ancient Troy, we should beware of such Trojan Horses from the Board."
"Other states have had endless problems with their touch screen voting machines and are rapidly abandoning multimillion dollar investments in this bankrupt technology." said Bo Lipari, Executive Director of New Yorkers for Verified Voting. "Why does the State Board of Elections want to allow these broken machines into our polling places in spite of the abundant evidence that DREs are a failed experiment?"
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