NY DEMS want Nassau recount. New optical scanning machines "suck" says attorney!

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

Democrats push for manual hand count of ballots in Nassau County. 40% of the scanners failed the mandated audit. DEMS don't know if recount will help the democratic candidate Craig Johnson
or not, but they want to set a precedent of counting all of the votes.

Senate Democrats lack cash, time

By Jimmy Vielkind Capitol Bureau
Published: 12:00 a.m., Thursday, December 2, 2010

...
Despite the shortfall, Democrats are pushing for a hand recount in Nassau County, where Sen. Craig Johnson trails his Republican opponent Jack Martins by some 400 votes. Weeks of legal wrangling in Erie and Niagara counties ended with the Tuesday concession of Sen. Antoine Thompson, D-Buffalo, to Mark Grisanti, handing the GOP a 31st confirmed seat in the 62-member chamber.
...
"Whatever the cost, we're going to raise the resources necessary to pay it off," said Austin Shafran, a spokesman for Senate Democrats. "We're going to exhaust every resource possible to ensure every vote is counted."
...
Steven Schlesinger, a Democratic attorney working on the Johnson count, said it's important work. He said new optical scanning machines "suck," and estimated 40 percent failed a required audit; that represents 1,200 votes in the district.
...
It's just as important, he said, to set a legal precedent that mandates a hand recount. This is the first year elections in New York have been conducted with the new voting machines, and it's the first time there is a verifiable trail of paper ballots.
....

You can do it New York!

[Bill Bored]

1. Thanks for the post! Unfortunately, the apathy in NY is so thick you can cut it with a knife!

I hope this race and the 200,000-ballot discrepancy in the City of New York will be enough to get people to wake up and realize what the State of New York has been doing to our election system.

But I also expect the usual public hearings in which partisan election officials lie and partisan legislators swear to it.

There was no real legislative oversight leading up to these elections, even though the Dems had control of both houses of the NY State Legislature and the Executive Branch, including the Attorney General -- an elected office in New York. Not to mention control of half the State Board of Elections.

All these hacks did was to circle the wagons and say how great -- no, how PERFECT! -- the new system was going to be; how the paper ballots would be "available" in case they were needed for an audit or recount; while downplaying all the obvious and less obvious ballot scanner flaws that had been discovered; and ignoring the opinions of experts such as those working for NIST who've said NOT to trust software to count votes, and experts who have studied auditing and statistics who know how many ballots need to be counted by hand to prove who really won our elections.

Now they find they can't even afford to pay their election lawyers! And that doesn't even take into account the cost of the hand counts, if they get 'em!

So it's easier for the Democrats to CONCEDE than to "count every vote" and that's exactly what they've been doing so far.

But in Nassau County, things may be different because this county is the one that stood up and filed a BIPARTISAN LAWSUIT to STOP electronic vote-counting. That may turn out to be the REAL STORY here, regardless of who wins this race, or whether or not there's a hand count. See:
http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/04/01/26056.htm