NY Voters Find Some Machines Harder to Use

[rusty charly]

With New York State facing a looming deadline to modernize its election technology, a new report offers evidence that one of the two major types of voting machines being considered has a higher rate of unrecorded votes, suggesting that it is too confusing for many people.

The report, which the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law intends to release today, examined election records from thousands of counties across the nation since 2000. It is likely to animate long-simmering debates across the state’s 62 counties, which face a December deadline for deciding how to replace antiquated voting equipment.

For an overwhelming majority of the state’s 11.6 million registered voters, the changes will mean the end of the creaky lever machines that have been used for decades. One of the two types of machines under consideration is the direct-recording electronic or D.R.E. systems, in which voters push a button or touch a screen to choose a candidate, and the ballot is automatically recorded and counted.

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/nyregion/28voting.html?th=&emc=th&pagewanted=print

The other is the optical-scan system, in which voters mark an oval or arrow next to a candidate’s name on a paper ballot, which is then scanned into a machine at the precinct, allowing the voter to find and fix any errors. The choice, however, is further complicated because the State Board of Elections has ruled that state law requires the use of a “full face” ballot — a ballot that displays all candidates for all races on a single page or screen.