Give Me A Lever And A Place to Stand...

[Bill Bored]

"Archimedes asked only for a lever and a place to stand, and he would move the world." -- John Mason, Hudson-Catskill Newspapers



Please forward this to every New Yorker you communicate with -- Conservative, Liberal, Green, Independent, Republicans, Working Families, Democrats, etc. All have one thing in common:
We want our votes to be counted.

New York has the last transparent, secure, accurate and reliable electoral system left in the nation. Join citizens, county legislators, county election commissioners and political parties in saving our lever voting system!

Here's how:

1) Seek resolutions from your county government. At our blog, http://re-mediaetc.blogspot.com, you'll find a letter to send to your legislators with contact info and a copy of the text of the first resolution to keep our level voting system, unanimously passed in Dutchess County, NY, now being considered by other county legislatures and with your help, across the entire state! Send copies of this letter, or your own version, to all members of government. Find helpful contact links at our blog.

2) Sign and circulate this petition: http://www.electiondefensealliance.org/save_ny_levers

3) Donate to our efforts on the blog site & contact [e-mail] to volunteer some time to Save Our Lever Voting System.

4. Finally, please read and circulate this excellent article about Columbia County's efforts by John Mason in the Hudson-Catskill Newspapers:
http://www.registerstar.com/articles/2009/02/02/news/news02.txt
County may petition to stick with levers
As Mason so aptly notes, "Archimedes asked only for a lever and a place to stand, and he would move the world."

Thanks for taking the time to help!

Andi Novick, Esq.
Founder, Re-Media Election Transparency Coalition

http://re-mediaetc.blogspot.com/2009/02/give-me-lever-and-place-to-stand.html

[2Design]

1. I liked the levers - you could tell who was in which party - it just made it easier vote a party n/t

[Festivito]

2. NO! The levers get shaved so votes drop. PAPER BALLOTS ONLY.

Once shaved, all the election people have to do is to place the names of those running where they want them to be shaved or not.

We need computer printed ballots one hands a poll worker. The poll worker identifies the voter, then stamps the ballot as approved by that poll worker.

A machine can read the computer printed ballot for making early returns, but the entire vote must be completely recounted by poll workers under the eye of any and all voters before elected office is taken.

[Wilms]

4. Last I checked, hand counting wasn't on the menu except for accessibilty voting.

What is about to be served (if the People don't prevail) is computerized vote counting of the sort commonly known as optical scan.

[Bill Bored]

6. Read the NY Election Law! Only 3% of ballots may be hand counted. Keep the LEVERS!

We can inspect them, test them and repair them. None of which is true with computers, including optical scanners.

We aren't going to hand count all the ballots after spending $50-million on computers. Try to understand that. And also, as I THINK I told you on another forum, ballot orders are NOT determined by where the gears are shaved.

Tell me how you or an election inspector would inspect a computer?

Tell me how many paper ballots you would have to count to know who really won an election.

Tell me how you would secure those ballots if they weren't counted on election night at the polls.

Tell me what you would do if you found they were tampered with.

You're going to have to do a LOT better than "the gears can be shaved" to convince me that paper ballots counted by computers are any better than lever machines, and NOT a whole lot worse.

[Festivito]

8. Levers are a step back in the right direction.

At least in the right direction from restrictions limiting democracy to counting (by hand) only 3% of ballots.

With computers, all ballots must be hand read. The computers can only offer unofficial early results. Random recounting should be viewed with skepticism.

Inspecting the computer then becomes less important, but can be done to a degree, a degree similar to the degree that lever machine can be verified by an election inspector as being free of any and all possible tampering.

Security is an issue of paper ballots, but so is the security of the lever machine if for some reason the lever-machine counts cannot be retrieved directly after polls close.

What does one do if one finds after the election that the lever machine was altered. It can be the same problem as finding ballots are missing (machine gets reset or goes unread) or that ballots were altered(shaving), or that ballots were added(lockout failed to occur).

Yes, lever machines have a delightful set of well designed interconnected lockouts, but they too can fail. The same questions apply to each system.

Given an insanely stupid law limiting recounting votes to 3% of all votes, a lever machine is better. Perhaps a mental health bill is more needed.

[clear eye]

9. You ARE a broken record, aren't you?

It doesn't matter to you how many times people tell you that there is a precise formula for what position each candidate takes on the machine which can't be arbitrarily altered, that the machines get extensively tested before election day, that paper ballots can and have and do get stolen, and that the alternative to the lever machines that is on the verge of being implemented is optical scanners, not paper ballots. You continue to lurk around this forum just waiting for someone to advocate retaining the lever machines, so you can pop out and yell "Crooked lever machines!! Paper ballots!!"

I guess I just have to "ignore" you--permanently.

[Joe Chi Minh]

3. When the Republicans claimed the old Jewish lady retirees of Miami Dade

couldn't work out how to operate the voting machines, I thought it was one of the funniest things I'd read in a long time. Of all the sectors of society you wouldn't want to try and pull a fast one over, elderly Jewish ladies would probably head my list by a wide margin. Women, generally, but elderly Jewish women, in particular.

Even Buchanan, who I believe is an overt anti-Semite and all-round racist (correct me, if I'm wrong) said the ballot result was impossible.

Anyway, I believe New York has a sizeable Jewish population, so it seems they're making sure what goes round comes round for our now notoriously-innumerate, Republican friends! As they say in Yorkshire, "They've screwed the bobbin" and decided they'd make it nice and easy for the Republicans to count their votes. Tee hee tither tither!

[Bill Bored]

5. What you're describing are overvotes cast for both Gore and Buchanan in FL 2000 (Butterfly Ballots).

Those were punch cards and they were one of the main reasons Gore lost the Presidency.

Overvoting happens to be impossible on lever machines. Has been for decades. This is what New Yorkers mean when they say we didn't have the problems they had in Florida that brought us HAVA.

We've had a functional transparent election system here for so long that we take it for granted! Now it's being put at risk for no good reason and everyone's been rolling over. No more.

[Joe Chi Minh]

7. Lever machines are subject to other problems, I believe. There is no substitute

for pen and paper in elections.