Optical Scan Voting Machines In Use By Fall 2009
The federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed after the 2000 presidential election to ensure better counting of votes and access for the disabled.
BY RICHARD GENTILVISO

With the presidential primary over, the city's ancient voting machines are back in storage. At 1,369 polling places throughout the city, 7,780 mechanical-lever machines did their job once again.

In New York City, voter turnout on February 5 was more than twice as great as it was in 2004 when the vote was held in March. About 900,000 out of 2.9 million registered Democrats and approximately 74,000 of 464,458 registered Republicans pulled levers to vote this year.

But last month, under a court order, the state Board of Elections submitted a plan of action in the U.S. District Court to finally comply with federal requirements to ensure voting access for the disabled and to buy new voting machines.

On January 16, the state agreed to a timeline that puts at least one new voting machine for disabled voters at each polling place by Primary Day in September 2008, and ultimately replaces all 20,000 pull-lever voting machines, in use throughout the state since the early 1960s, with optical scanning machines by the fall of 2009.

The federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed after the 2000 presidential election to ensure better counting of votes and access for the disabled. New York is the last state to comply with HAVA.

However, the long delay has helped New York avoid problems with new voting machine technology that other states have encountered.

New York chose optical scanning machines that allow voters to mark and review their votes on paper ballots, which are then scanned by machines. This permits easy and effective recounting of votes, if necessary.

California required at least 20 counties to go back to paper ballots for its February 5 presidential primary after problems with touch-screen voting machines that did not provide paper backup of votes. In 2006, touch-screen voting machines used in Sarasota, Florida failed to record 18,000 votes cast in a race decided by 400 votes.

New Jersey used touch-screen voting machines without any paper backup because new paper printers were not in place in time for their February 5 primary vote. Ohio, Florida and Colorado, in addition to California, all decided to change to paper ballots from paperless, touch-screen voting machines.

Connecticut was the first state to employ optical scan voting machines with paper ballots instead of pull-lever machines in its February 5 vote.

Millions of federal dollars are at stake in the effort to comply with HAVA. Certification of new electronic voting machines began on January 11 and must be finished by Dec. 25, 2008.

Testing will take place from May 2, 2008 through Oct. 22, 2008 and the new voting machines will then be ordered and delivered by June 3, 2009, according to the timeline.

Under the court order, the state Board of Elections must send a progress report to Judge Gary L. Sharpe of the Federal District Court every Friday to verify that each deadline has been met.