New voting machines

Editorial    The Journal News
(Original publication: May 18, 2005)

There are lots of reasons to look forward to July ? beach weather, vacations, the filing of campaign-finance reports by state lawmakers. The scent of greenbacks almost hangs in the air. We expect the documents to offer insight into the paralysis that grips Albany lawmakers unwilling to settle on the next generation of voting machines for New Yorkers.

The several voting-system companies looking to cash in on the lucrative New York market have spent more than $1 million trying to sell the decision-makers on their devices. The largess, however, has only engendered indecision, and an ill-conceived plan to let each New York county decide which machines to purchase.

That could hurt New York in two ways. First, it could push New York beyond a September 2006 deadline for revamping its voting system, as required under the federal Help America Vote Act. That means losing out on some $153 million in Washington aid earmarked for new machines. Looking to replace 22,000 lever-style machines, New York is among only a dwindling number of states or territories yet to qualify for HAVA funds, established after the voting-system failures of 2000.

Second, pushing the decision to the counties ? for simplicity, let's just call it "abdicating responsibility" ? would do nothing to maximize cost through economies of scale or heighten uniformity, security or voter confidence. The inevitable hodgepodge of county-adopted solutions would put New York right back on course for the kind of dangling- and pregnant-chad fiasco that brought Florida such scorn and ridicule in 2000.

In Albany, a key Senate-Assembly committee said last week that it would abandon the idea of ing one machine, this after Republicans insisted on having each county pick. "We want to give flexibility to counties to make their own decisions," said Sen. Nicholas Spano, R-Yonkers, who should know better than anybody the cost of election freelancing; his re-election hung in the balance for months because of procedural foul-ups at polling places. The senator should be pressing Albany to lead on the issue, not to abdicate to the counties ? giving lobbyists more time and license to run amok.

To be certain, lawmakers are hardly starved for information about the choices. Albany Bureau reporter Yancey Roy wrote in a story published yesterday that some Democrats would work to sell county governments on a machine that relies on paper, pencil and an optical scanner ? akin to the technology used to "read" standardized tests. These machines, which we view as promising, offer the security benefit of a paper record of a vote ? an answer to fraud, hacking or tampering.

Some Republicans, on the other hand, are sold on paperless electronic machines, whose design more closely approximates prevailing technology, meaning more familiarity among voters. These touch-screen machines are said to cost about $2,500 apiece more than scanning machines, but without the paper costs. Democrats counter that the touch-screen machines are more expensive to maintain. They maintain that the scanning machines have longer life spans.

In any event, the choice isn't much more complicated or involved than that ? notwithstanding the mysteries to be revealed in the July campaign-finance reports. The lawmakers should nip chaos in the bud and decide the issue now.