NY: A Mini-Rebellion Averted As Town Transfers Voting Keys

[Wilms]

Too, bad.

A Mini-Rebellion Averted As Town Transfers Voting Keys

By Don Heppner, Westchester Record-Review

May 01, 2006

This article originally appeared in the Westchester County, NY Record-Review. It is reposted by permission of the author.

In the past, town governments had control of most election chores. Not anymore. In an act of defiance that approached the tea dumping party in the Boston Harbor in 1773, when asked by the county in January, Pound Ridge refused to give the county its keys to its lever voting machines.

“It was the consensus that the machines were ours,” Gary Warshauer, town supervisor said. “We wanted to know what they were going to do with them and we wanted to know how our residents were going to vote.”

snip

Reginald A. LaFayette, the commissioner of the board of elections, wrote that he “regretted” that the town did not comply with the request for keys and unless the keys could be inventoried, the county would notify the New York State Board of Elections that the town did not comply with state law. The county wrote that “we will be unable to certify your voting machines for the upcoming 2006 elections.”

Joanne Pace, the town’s clerk, drove the keys down to the Westchester County offices in White Plains. Ms. Pace waited while they were inventoried and brought them back to Pound Ridge, no longer town property, but under the control of the county.

snip

A lawyer who is associated with a political party and wished to remain anonymous said that New York law does not require the lever machines to be replaced.

“The language in the law gives local boards of elections the option of choosing to retain them,” he said. “This is widely misunderstood, even by some who voted for the law.”

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http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1245&Itemid=113