NY: County may petition to stick with levers

[Bill Bored]

By John Mason

Hudson-Catskill Newspapers

COLUMBIA COUNTY - Archimedes asked only for a lever and a place to stand, and he would move the world.

The Columbia County Board of Elections last week seconded that motion, saying in effect, who needs touch screens, optical scanners or paper ballots, when good, old levered voting machines beat any other electoral technology known to the franchised world.

-snip-

In her agenda for the meeting, Democratic Election Commissioner Virginia Martin summed up concerns the county Board of Elections has with the optical scan machines that the county would use under ERMA.

The machines, she stated:

n Have not been certified by New York state and are unlikely to be certified in time for fall elections.

n Do not have a track record of successful use, as do the levered machines.

n Would require the county to spend "considerable sums, well in excess of $50,000 at the minimum in 2009 alone, and many thousands of dollars each subsequent year they are employed, sums that are far above the cost that would be incurred by the continued use of our lever machines."

n Do not provide the transparency of the voting process that levered machines do.

n Are not required by the Help America Vote Act.

The resolution calls on the state to reverse ERMA, notes that Columbia County has successfully used lever-style machines for many decades, declares their continued use to be in the best interest of the public and says their required elimination is "unnecessary, inappropriate and costly to ... county taxpayers."

A similar resolution was passed by the Dutchess County Legislature in December 2008. This has occurred as dissatisfaction with the electronic machines, which have been adopted in every state but New York, has been growing.

The measure passed unanimously with little discussion.

-snip-

Rhinebeck's Andi Novick, of Northeast Citizens for Responsible Media, has been corresponding with Bryan Pfaffenberger, a professor of science, technology and society at the University of Virginia. He's working on a book, "Machining the Vote," on the history of the lever machines.

-snip-

"To abandon lever machines for new technologies that will not gain voter confidence and, at the same time, re-introduce paper audit trails or paper ballots which have long proven to be prone to election fraud, amounts in my opinion to a potentially disastrous mistake."

http://www.registerstar.com/articles/2009/02/02/news/news02.txt

[Wilms]

1. Please forward this to every New Yorker...

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

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

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

2. Its not like computerized voting is better, and it has so many more holes in it

makes no sense to go out and buy something that is already known
to be a lemon.

[tbyg52]

3. Works for me.

From what I know of them, those things are almost impossible to hack.