New York - Finally NYC Getting Rid of Lever Voting Machines |
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News Source: NY Times
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New York - 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.
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Read Comments (16) — Post Yours »
1
Jan 04, 2010 at 12:53 PM a yid Says:Report as Inappropriate
next we will vote from our own computers. but will we have better candidates?
2
Jan 04, 2010 at 01:01 PM Anonymous Says:Report as Inappropriate
This is good news and will make it easier to get the right outcomes in an election with minimal effort.
3
Jan 04, 2010 at 01:02 PM Anonymous Says:Report as Inappropriate
THat would be a step backwards. Now there will be questions - did i fill out the right spot? What if I change my mind?
Way to go, NY
4
Jan 04, 2010 at 01:12 PM Ben Says:Report as Inappropriate
This is so funny, were moving up from the 18th to the 19th century. If this were a private enterprise it would of been bankrupt a long time ago.
5
Jan 04, 2010 at 01:55 PM A. Nuran Says:Report as Inappropriate
In my day job I'm an info-sec engineer. One of the most exhaustively studied things in the field since the 2000 Presidential election is voting security. The old school pull-the-lever voting machine was just about the most unambiguous, secure and difficult to fake system out there. This is a step backwards, away from honest elections.
6
Jan 04, 2010 at 02:02 PM Anonymous Says:Report as Inappropriate
As usual, NY City is one of the last.
I travelled on the BART - the S. Fransisco Subway line line in 1974 and they already had an electronic Metro Card system!
The NYC Subways only using Metro Cards only in 2002! That's 28 years after such a system was in place elsewhere.
Similarly with the voting stations!
The reason is simple. In NY City there are that many more officials that need to be bought before they are willing to change to something more modern and efficient.
7
Jan 04, 2010 at 02:28 PM AuthenticSatmar Says:Report as Inappropriate
Why don't they just go fully digital with touch screen? This is so backwards, and open to fraud.
8
Jan 04, 2010 at 03:05 PM A. Nuran Says:Report as Inappropriate
“ Why don't they just go fully digital with touch screen? This is so backwards, and open to fraud. ”
AuthenticSatmar, the digital solutions and touch screens are all horrible from a security point of view. There is no tangible physical artifact. All of the e-voting schemes are full of holes and potential breaches. We already know that through fraud, poor design, poor execution, laziness and incompetence that every one of them has failed to the point where elections went the wrong way.
The old system was better. It might not have been as gleaming and high-tech. But it worked. It was verifiable. It was much more difficult to corrupt. And it had many fewer points of failure.
9
Jan 04, 2010 at 03:05 PM Rifka Says:Report as Inappropriate
“ Why don't they just go fully digital with touch screen? This is so backwards, and open to fraud. ”
Wish they had this in Monsey. We are watched to see which lever we pull. About 7 of us pulled the wrong lever and were questioned. Then the whole community knew we voted for the wrong official. (Sigh.....) Wish we had this in Monsey.
10
Jan 04, 2010 at 03:40 PM Anonymous Says:Report as Inappropriate
“ Wish they had this in Monsey. We are watched to see which lever we pull. About 7 of us pulled the wrong lever and were questioned. Then the whole community knew we voted for the wrong official. (Sigh.....) Wish we had this in Monsey. ”
I don't know where in Monsey you vote, but every place I've voted (several Monsey polling stations over the years) has had privacy curtains. Electronic voting systems are terribly insecure and are subject to both system failures and outright fraud. The problem you are describing will not be fixed by "better" voting machines; it will be fixed by a better understanding of civics.
11
Jan 04, 2010 at 03:42 PM Dave Says:Report as Inappropriate
"I can make them voting machines sing Home Sweet Home." -- Huey Long.
Actually, as much as I like the Myers designed old-school voting booths, they are less secure than anything that produces an actual auditable paper trail.
The problem is that all pulling the lever does is increase a set of mechanical counters. There is no ability to recount, or revisit. That means that anyone who can tamper with the mechanical counters (either to adjust their initial position, or to jam them, which causes them to stop counting) controls the vote with no ability for a recount.
So, yeah, filling out Scantron (or completely an arrow) or any of the related paper voting forms feels more like taking a standardized test than the ceremony that the old voting booths gave. But it is inaccurate to say that the Myers booths are more secure than digitally counted human readable ballots.
12
Jan 04, 2010 at 03:48 PM Ben Says:Report as Inappropriate
Ebay, Amazon Paypal the stock exchange the pentagon and all the banks figured out how to operate securely online but the voting system cant. Something doesn't smell right.
13
Jan 04, 2010 at 05:31 PM Anonymous Says:Report as Inappropriate
“ Ebay, Amazon Paypal the stock exchange the pentagon and all the banks figured out how to operate securely online but the voting system cant. Something doesn't smell right. ”
ebay, Amazon, Paypal, and the stock exchange keep track of transactions based on specific people. Transactions can be undone is security is breached. Same thing with banks. Classified materials tend not to be on the internet. Military communications do not use the internet in a conventional way.
Voting is different. Voting cannot be undone after an election. The votes are not tied to specific people, so showing the exact fraud would be nearly impossible. There is more to gain by forcing an election result than by breaking into a financial website.
14
Jan 05, 2010 at 06:03 AM Jonathan Says:Report as Inappropriate
“ AuthenticSatmar, the digital solutions and touch screens are all horrible from a security point of view. There is no tangible physical artifact. All of the e-voting schemes are full of holes and potential breaches. We already know that through fraud, poor design, poor execution, laziness and incompetence that every one of them has failed to the point where elections went the wrong way.
The old system was better. It might not have been as gleaming and high-tech. But it worked. It was verifiable. It was much more difficult to corrupt. And it had many fewer points of failure. ”
Not quite. I studied the issues of voting privacy and security with one of the top names today in field (http://bit.ly/7vAq1o). The old mechanical-lever machine that you claim was verifiable simply was not. It was the 19th-century version of today's DREs. They simply tallied votes; individual voters' votes could not be recounted. See http://bit.ly/8eserZ at wikipedia for the details.
A paper ballot is one of the simplest ways to ensure there is a truly recountable system. And, with optical scanning, the count is much (MUCH) faster than hand recounting. Is it perfect? No, of course not. Is an optical-scan paper ballot better than either the lever machines or DREs? For sure!
15
Jan 05, 2010 at 10:41 AM A. Nuran Says:Report as Inappropriate
Johnathan, the lever voting machines I'm familiar with punched holes in a paper ballot. We may be talking about two different things.
16
Jan 05, 2010 at 12:48 PM Dave Says:Report as Inappropriate
“ Johnathan, the lever voting machines I'm familiar with punched holes in a paper ballot. We may be talking about two different things. ”
If you look at the article, the lever voting machines used in New York only updated a mechanical counter, they did not leave any paper record.