NEW YORK: VOTERS UNITE BLASTS STATE BOARD OF ELECTIONS' SCANNER MADNESS! (K&R!)

[Bill Bored]

New York's New Plan for Deploying Optical Scanners Is Dependent on Historically Undependable Vendors and Proper Functioning of Their Historically Defective Equipment

by Ellen Theisen. June 12, 2009

http://www.votersunite.org/info/NYSBOE-June4Plan.asp

New York has been struggling to comply with federal and state laws that require changes to their voting equipment. The state has encountered many problems with its current vendors – Sequoia/Dominion and Election Systems and Software (ES&S) – and their equipment. Nevertheless, the State Board of Elections' most recent plan is wholly dependent on the performance of those vendors and that equipment.

A little background

The federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) requires every polling place to offer a method of voting that enables people with disabilities to vote privately and independently. A New York State law passed in 2005 requires the replacement of lever machines by September 2007. The law was amended in August 2007 to remove any specific date for the replacement of levers, because no system could be certified in time to meet the original deadline.

New York State regulations require the new equipment to meet 2005 federal voting system standards, but after three years of rigorous state testing, no voting system has been able to pass its certification tests. The delay has been caused by 1) deficiencies in the test labs contracted to test the equipment, and 2) deficiencies in the equipment being tested and its documentation produced by the vendors.

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The SBOE plans to complete certification testing for both vendors' scanners by mid-December and then certify them both on December 15, 2009. The proposal states:

"SBOE has urgently and repeatedly stressed to all involved that everything and anything that can be done to move this process forward should be undertaken."
and
"SBOE is committed to full certification and delivery as indicated in this document and the accompanying documents."

This commitment to certification is highly optimistic, in light of these facts:

During the last three years of testing the Sequoia ImageCast scanner, the labs have found hundreds of problems that had to be corrected, and the SBOE has not yet certified it.
No testing (none) has been done on the ES&S DS200 scanner.

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It's difficult to believe that things will go better using uncertified ES&S and Sequoia equipment in the state-wide "pilot program."

In fact, many citizens don’t.

A coalition of election integrity and good government groups have written letters to the SBOE, the U.S. Department of Justice, and the New York State Attorney General urging improvements to the program, such as a reduction in the size of the pilot to no more than 10% of the registered voters in any participating county, contingency plans, and 100% election-night hand counts of every paper ballot tabulated by the uncertified scanners. http://www.wheresthepaper.org/PilotLetterToDoJ&AG.pdf">One such letter points out the obvious: that "failure to make meaningful changes to the pilot will raise serious questions about the results of these elections."

[billyoc]

1. Scanner madness!

[Bill Bored]

2. kick nt

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

3. warning

[Wilms]

4. Correct.

The New York State Board of Elections is choreographing the a wide-spread violation of HAVA, under the specious guise of conducting an experiment.

[Bill Bored]

5. .

[Bill Bored]

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