NY Legislature Intros Bill to Restore Lever Voting in NYC

[BradBlog]

NY State Legislature Introduces Bill to Restore Lever Voting Machines in NYC This Fall

Not to say we told ya so, but... Rachel Barnhart of Rochester's WROC-TV just tweeted this: "Wow, state assembly intro's bill to allow NYC to bring back lever machines for primary"...

FULL STORY: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=10048

[Wilms]

1. Good.

Glad they're getting a handle on it.

[BradBlog]

2. Smartly done, Wilms! :-)

[brooklynite]

3. The great thing about lever machines is...

...once you've rigged the votes, there's no way to do a recount.

Trust me, I started out as a Ward Committeeman in Philly, and learned that an unscrupulous person can ring up a dozen votes on a lever machine in about 10 minutes.

In any event, the issue isn't vote integrity (NYS votes with paper ballots); it's the incompetence of the patronage-laden Board of Election in counting them quickly if the results are close.

[Bill Bored]

4. Trust no one!

You must be confusing levers with scanners there Brooklynite.

Unlike levers, scanners can generate phantom votes all by themselves. See:
http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/voters-damned-article-1.1028275

And see Harri Hursti's scanner hack from years ago, which should be common knowledge by now:
http://www.votetrustusa.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=798&Itemid=51
Doesn't matter what the zero tape says! The scanner can have votes in the machine without anyone knowing.

As far as your lever counter experience, we have election laws that say how to run lever elections in NY, or at least we used to. And they state exactly how and when to check those counters, which CANNOT increment by themselves the way scanner counters can.

But I agree this latest move to levers is not necessarily about election integrity. It's about avoiding the possibility of a HAND COUNT of paper ballots in the event of a close City-wide election. The rest of the state gets to avoid hand counts, so why should the City be the only jurisdiction to have to find out who won their close elections? Answer: because the City Board of Elections wrote regulations to do so. But this time, they don't think they can enforce their own rules because there are so many paper ballots and so little time. (Note: Columbia County counts ALL votes by hand, no matter how close their elections appear to be.)

If you want to use paper ballots, you have to be prepared to count them by hand, and to find a way to know when this is necessary if you do the first count on scanners. We don't have any of that in NY, or any other state that I know of except for some elections in New Mexico, and it's possible we never will. In that case, lever machines are far more reliable vote counting devices than ballot scanners.

[brooklynite]

5. Yes, the scanners can...

...the problem the BOE has is when it has to do a manual recount of the paper ballots when the result is close.