City Finally Poised to Give Up Lever Voting Machines

Sunday, 03 January 2010 07:12

By DAVID W. CHEN of the New York Times

Say goodbye to the voting booth with its quaint little curtain. Say goodbye to pulling the lever for your candidate.

And say hello to filling in SAT-style ovals on Election Day.

After years of delays and missteps, the city’s Board of Elections is expected to choose new electronic voting machines on Tuesday that will be rolled out in time for the September primary. In so doing, New York City will become one of the last places in the country to get rid of its lever-operated voting machines.

 

The change will improve the way votes are counted, providing a paper trail backup for each vote, and make lines at the polls move faster, according to the Board of Elections. But it will also end another urban ritual, as tactile intimacy gives way to modern efficiency.

“In the context of the history of voting in New York, the shift away from lever machines is a huge milestone,” said Lawrence D. Norden, director of the Voter Technology Assessment Project at the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law. “Most New Yorkers are nostalgic about lever machines. I know I am. Ask a New Yorker about those machines and they will tell you that there is something reassuring about pulling the lever and hearing the choices register on the machine.”

The current Shoup 3.2 mechanical voting machines used in city polling places have been in place for about half a century, according to Valerie L. Vazquez, a spokeswoman for the Board of Elections. But lever machines have had their problems. They can break down, causing lines at some polling places. They do not always record votes. And if the machine’s counter is broken, there is no paper record of a vote to verify.

To avoid the Florida election debacle of 2000 and to help disabled people vote, Congress passed the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Several legislatures quickly selected new voting systems for their entire states.

Albany, however, was so delinquent in selecting a system that the Justice Department sued New York State in 2006 and threatened to take away federal money set aside for any costs associated with the transition to new technology.

Eventually, the New York Legislature allowed cities and counties to make their own choices, and New York City was one of the last to do so.

Election Systems and Software of Omaha and Dominion Voting of Toronto are the finalists for the coveted $70 million contract. The winner would provide 5,000 to 7,000 new voting machines in the city.

The two voting systems are similar. After signing in, a voter fills out his or her ballots at one of several voting stations, which are like raised desks, with dividers to offer privacy. The voter then walks a short distance to a scanning machine, which displays instructions on a computer touch screen on how to scan in the ballot.

After the voter feeds the ballots into the machine, they drop into a locked box underneath as backup hard copies in the event of any disputes or recounts. The voter is asked, through a series of screen prompts, questions designed to guarantee that the voter’s choices are final.

Election Systems and Software, the dominant company in the United States, offers a $7,800 machine with a bigger and splashier touch screen. It has also provided a specially designed machine for disabled voters, which is already in use in New York City.

“This is the company that has all the experience and the wherewithal to manage a big account — the Detroits, the Minneapolises, the Fort Lauderdale-Broward Counties,” said Judd Ryan, a sales manager for Election Systems and Software.

The Dominion Voting machines cost about $7,200 each. Company officials believe their smaller touch screen affords more privacy. And their Canadian headquarters notwithstanding, they are stressing their New York ties, arguing that they would create dozens of manufacturing and sales jobs locally, and that most New York municipalities have chosen them to date.

“We’re very New York-centric,” said John Poulos, the company’s president and chief executive.

Before the Tuesday vote, the city’s Board of Elections convened a public hearing on Dec. 29. It has also held demonstrations of both systems in all five boroughs.

Some election experts remain concerned about the possibility of accidental “overvotes,” when, for instance, someone fills in ovals for two candidates rather than one (something that the levers would not have allowed). Some are also concerned that the design of the paper ballots might be too confusing or hard to read.

One citizens’ group, the Election Transparency Coalition, is preparing to file a lawsuit against the state to halt the transition to the new machines.

Still, most election experts predict that the new system should be in place by September.

“We’ve tested these machines to far greater standards than most other states,” Mr. Norden said. “That will hopefully result in more reliable and secure systems.”

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