How Albany picks a new voting machine
Monday, May 02, 2005
By Erik Kriss   Syracus Post-Standard
There's a million-dollar battle raging over what kinds of voting machines New Yorkers will use starting next year.

Thanks to the 2000 presidential election debacle in Florida, New York's mechanical lever machines should be gone by the November 2006 election, the result of a sweeping federal voting law requiring, in part, that voting systems be accessible to the disabled.

The decisions state officials make in the next two months will change the way New Yorkers vote. And lawmakers aren't making those decisions in a vacuum. 
 
Since Congress passed the Help America Vote Act in 2002, voting machine vendors have spent nearly $1.2 million trying to influence New York's choice of voting system.

The battle boils down to touch-screen electronic devices vs. optical scanners that tabulate paper ballots.

Advocates for touch-screen machines, which are more expensive up front, say they are cheaper in the long run and easier for voters to use. Voters simply touch squares bearing the name of their candidate on a screen.

Optical scanning advocates say their devices are more accurate and reliable because they read actual paper ballots marked by voters.

The touch-screen machines cost about $8,000 each, and with 20,000 lever machines to be replaced, State Board of Elections spokesman Lee Daghlian puts the total cost of touch-screens at about $160 million. Optical scanners cost $5,500 to $6,000, but critics say the need to keep buying paper ballots would eventually make them far more expensive.

Optical scan proponents say polling places would require far fewer scanners, making the cost far less. Bo Lipari, head of New Yorkers for Verified Voting, estimates touch-screen machines could cost New York as much as $230 million. That's because every election district would need at least one disabled-accessible machine, and those functions bump the cost to about $11,500 per unit, he said. His group puts the initial cost of optical scanners at $114 million.

Lobbyists at work

Voting machine vendors have hired some of Albany's top lobbyists to plead their case to state lawmakers.

Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. has spent more than $300,000 on a lobbying firm run by Jeff Buley, the counsel for the State Republican Committee. 

Election Systems & Software Inc. has shelled out more than $200,000, using Buley and another top Albany firm, Davidoff and Malito.

And Diebold Election Systems Inc. has spent $225,000 on Albany's well-known Greenberg Traurig firm.

State lawmakers are still undecided on whether to approve a statewide contract for voting machines or leave decisions to localities. So vendors cover their bases and regularly plug their products to local elections officials as well.

Touch-screen machines resemble the lever machines to which New York voters are accustomed, and most observers say they have the edge in New York.

Aimee Allaud of the League of Women Voters of New York State, which has endorsed optical scanning, said bills under discussion in both the Senate and Assembly describe touch-screen voting.

"I think that's the outcome of the lobbying," she said.

At voting-machine demonstrations, Sequoia openly pushes its touch-screen machines over the optical scanners it also produces. Election Systems & Software, which also produces both, does the same, spokeswoman Meghan McCormick said.

Proponents of optical scan machines suspect the manufacturers see more money in selling electronic machines. Lebanon town Supervisor James Goldstein says vendors have influenced Madison County's elections commissioners, who he said are "on a first-name basis" with Sequoia's Central New York representative, Larry Tonelli.

The two commissioners, Democrat Laura Costello and Republican Lynne Jones, echoed Sequoia's arguments that touch-screens would save money in the long run.

In Onondaga County, Edward Szczesniak, Democratic elections commissioner, and his Republican counterpart, Helen "Pinky" Kiggins, said they also favor the touch-screens also known as DREs, for direct recording electronic machines. 
 
"Ongoing costs for optical scanners are out of sight," Kiggins said. She said the county now spends $30,000 to print absentee and other paper ballots but would have to spend $300,000 under an optical scan system.

Goldstein doesn't buy it.

"If you're relying on vendors who want to sell them electronic voting machines that are more expensive, that would explain it, wouldn't it?" he said. "The bias has been toward DREs all along. It has been an uphill battle to get this paper ballot-optical scan option considered."

"Totally untrue," says Bill Kingman, Sequoia's regional manager for the Northeast, of the idea that vendors would make more money on touch-screen machines. "

He said Sequoia would make money either way, since it also produces optical scan machines and the stock for the paper ballots used in them.

Another selling point: Sequoia builds its voting machines in Owego, and part of Kingman's pitch is that his company would create 1,000 jobs in New York if it wins a voting-machine contract.

Goldstein says optical scan machines win easily on the most important criterion: reliability.

"If we don't have optical scanners and paper ballots in this state by the 2006 elections, I'm certainly going to be one who's questioning the results of elections," he said.

Optical scan proponents say their method provides a built-in paper trail of votes should any question arise about results.

Touch-screen proponents say their machines can be equipped to produce a paper record of every vote, likely on inexpensive receipt-style paper. 
 
Kimball Brace, president of Election Data Services, which sells voting-equipment services to state and local governments, said a 2003 study by Johns Hopkins University raised questions about whether electronic machines could be trusted to count ballots accurately.

That slowed down the movement toward touch-screens across the nation, Brace said.

"Because of the controversy on the DREs and the paper trail, we've seen a number of vendors now coming out with paper versions or paper attachments to their machines," he said.

At stake: $226 million

New York lawmakers have been unable to agree on other key issues they must address under the federal law, including what identification will be accepted at polls.

The state has to decide on a game plan soon or it could lose $226 million in federal funding.

Costello, the Madison County elections commissioner, said it may already be too late to buy, produce and certify machines for the November 2006 election.

Assembly Elections Committee Chairman Keith Wright, D-Manhattan, and his Senate counterpart, Republican John Flanagan of Long Island, say the Assembly is pushing for the state to define what kind of voting machines New York will use while the Senate wants "to provide flexibility to counties," in Flanagan's words. The process also has been slowed by a battle between the Senate and Assembly on staffing at the state Board of Elections, where, because of a key retirement, Republican appointees of Gov. George Pataki have control.

The delays and the debate are sure to be central topics when county elections commissioners from across New York gather for their three-day annual meeting today through Wednesday at DeWitt's Wyndham Hotel.

Although Wright said the Assembly has held a number of public hearings, Rachel Leon, executive director of Common Cause New York, says the Legislature's lack of action and open debate are leaving the public out of the decision.

"Whatever machine we pick is going to dramatically change the way we vote for decades, so this should be a public discussion," she said. "The Legislature hasn't really done their job."