By Helen Klein
As New York City’s Board of Elections grapples with the choice of new voting machines, one local group of activists has come down firmly on the side of paper ballots and optical scanners. Members of Community Board 10 voted overwhelmingly at their January meeting to recommend that the city opt for the optical scanning equipment over computer touch screen voting machines, known as DREs (Direct Recording Electronic). The board vote was taken the day before a Board of Elections hearing on the matter, with a board representative to attend the hearing and present the board’s position. The meeting was held in the community room at Shore Hill, 9000 Shore Road. The motion to recommend the choice of optical scanning machines was made by board member Joanne Seminara, who had spoken to members during the board’s public session about the significance of the issue. Stressed Seminara, “I very strongly feel that the only way to publicly verify a vote, the only way to secure a vote, is to have a vote, to have a ballot that you can see and mark, that you can publicly sequester and keep safe and recount if necessary.” This can happen with optical scanning of paper ballots, said Seminara, but isn’t possible with the DREs. With the computer touch screen voting technology, Seminara contended, “Once your vote goes into the machine, it kind of doesn’t exist any more, and there’s no way to tell whether the machine has tallied it correctly. You have the total, but you can’t count whether there are x votes for this person and x votes for that person. You cannot re-verify the vote. I believe it’s critical for our democracy that we be able to verify the vote.” Peter Killen, the director of the Bay Ridge Consumer Federation (BRCF), concurred. Speaking during the public session, he said that he and other BRCF members had “Played with and touch and run ballots through all the voting machines of the corporations that want to get the contracts for New York City. “ As a result, he said, the group had come down firmly on the side of optical scanning equipment. “It’s a great system,” Killen contended. “The vote goes into the machine and is counted.” Then, he went on, the ballot falls into a locked box, awaiting a possible recount. This is not simply a philosophical debate. As the Board of Elections continues to mull over the options, the rush is on for New York State to get new voting machines. As the last state in the union not to have complied yet with the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), which was passed in 2002 in the wake of the controversial 2000 presidential election, New York is under orders from the federal Department of Justice to replace its old lever machines with machines that comply with HAVA’s requirements. These, basically, mandate that voting machines be handicapped-accessible and recountable, and provide a second chance to vote, in case of error. To comply with current Department of Justice requirements, New York State must have its new voting machines up and running by the September, 2007, primary election. However, since the passage of HAVA, and since many states have rushed to purchase DREs, other issues have arisen that have cast into doubt the efficiency and integrity of the touch screen voting machines. Most recently, during a congressional election in Florida, approximately 18,000 votes appear to have been lost by the DREs in use there. Cost is also a factor. Purchasing a sufficient number of DREs to accommodate the flow of voters is much more expensive than purchasing optical scanning equipment for them, according to those who have studied the matter. While New York will get either $53 or $72 million worth of federal funding to put to the purchase of new voting machines, the cost of getting a sufficient number of DREs to handle voters within a reasonable time frame can be as high as $106 to $132 million, while the optical scanning equipment will cost in the neighborhood of $35 to $38 million, according to Theresa Hommel, the chairperson of the Task Force on Election Integrity of the Community Church of New York. Among those who have come out against the DREs and in favor of optical scanners are the League of Women Voters and New Yorkers for Verified Voting. Many elected officials have also come out in support of optical scanners. Indeed 45 city councilmembers have signed on to a resolution recommending that the city Board of Elections opt for optical scanners rather than DREs. The council will hold an oversight hearing on the matter on January 29th at 10 a.m. in the council chambers.
