NAACP Says NY's Computerized Voting Will Disenfranchise Blacks and Latinos

[Bill Bored]

NAACP Says NY's Computerized Voting Will Disenfranchise Blacks and Latinos
By ADAM KLASFELD

BROOKLYN (CN) - The NAACP claims that city and state officials approved electronic voting machines configured so that "tens of thousands of votes will be needlessly lost in this fall's elections," and that racial and language minorities will particularly suffer from disenfranchisement.

New York is changing from lever machines to computerized systems to conform with the Help America Vote Act of 2002, which Congress enacted in response to the "debacle of 2000 presidential election in Florida," according to the federal complaint.

But the plaintiffs say the defendant state and city elections boards and officials ignored one of the lessons of the "debacle," by failing to program the computerized machines to discourage "over-voting."

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The plaintiffs say that the lever machines that New York has used for more than a century had an "interlock" system that made overvotes "impossible."

http://www.courthousenews.com/2010/06/30/28493.htm