New York, NY – The city’s new electronic voting machines are worse than the 40-year-old lever-pull models they replaced, Mayor Bloomberg charged Monday.
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“We wound up with a machine that has all of the same problems that the [2000] chad issue did in Florida,” the mayor said. “There it was – was the chad punched out? Here it is – did you fill it in?”
The city Board of Elections had widespread problems with the new machines in the primary election, and it recently discovered its Election Night totals in the general elections missed almost 200,000 votes.
“We’ve gone backwards,” Bloomberg said. “You could have somebody hack into a computer, but there’s lots of ways to protect against that. This was just terrible.”
The state requires new voting machines to include a paper trail for recounts, but handling that new paper delayed some results for hours last month.
The mayor and other pols say New York has more roadblocks to voting than any other state, and they called for new laws to allow early voting, simplified ballots and extended registration deadlines.
“The more people who get to vote, the better,” said Assemblyman Michael Gianaris (D-Queens). “Unfortunately, our laws do not reflect that principle and make it more difficult.”
The last head of the Board of Elections quit under pressure before last month’s election, and only one person has submitted a résumé for the open job, officials said at a City Council hearing.
“The old lever machines were a lot easier to me,” said Councilwoman Inez Dickens (D-Manhattan).
The NY ballot makes this particularly bad because you have the same candidate on so many different party lines.
A paper trail could be easily achieved by having a touch screen and a printed receipt that would be the official ballot that the voter can verify and put in a box to record their vote.
“If it aint broke, don’t fix it.” I learned that on the first day of my first job. The pols, apparently, haven’t learned it yet.
excuse me, but this was done under his watch….hence his screw up, his responsibility
glad mike’s coming to his senses. now what’s he going to do to fix his mistake?
i finally agree with the mayor. My problem with the new ballots was in order to change your vote you had to go back and get another paper and start over. one positive I didn’t feel rushed filling out the new ballots. The old way if there was a line waiting you din’t have the time to look at the ballot.