NY: An election the voters lost (no lever machines)

[Bill Bored]

An election the voters lost
Published: 12:00 a.m., Sunday, September 19, 2010

The days after an election inevitably bring dissections of the results down to the more minute level. This year, though, to the perennial question of who were the big losers, we can safely say that we all are were.

The primary elections across New York were a referendum on the state's new voting machines -- electronic scanners, paper ballots and all. Too often, they didn't work properly.

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Let's start close to home, in Albany County.

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Almost 8 percent of the voters in that election cast their ballots for what were counted as write-ins.

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Turns out that there was a write-in bubble beneath the name of every candidate on the primary ballot, which appears to have prompted some voters to fill in that oval instead of the correct one.

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That means their votes were wasted -- in the first election in Albany County held to conform to what's known, ironically in this case, as the Help America Vote Act.

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Too many New Yorkers already have found ample reasons not to vote, starting with the politicians who forever disappoint them. There's no reason, though, why poorly designed ballots should further discourage them from casting votes that actually count.

http://www.timesunion.com/opinion/article/An-election-the-voters-lost-664779.php