BACK TO BASICS: New York Should Not Replace Our Lever Voting Machines

[Wilms]

BACK TO BASICS: New York Should Not Replace Our Lever Voting Machines

by Teresa Hommel

April 11, 2009

New Yorkers for Verified Voting ("NYVV") recently published "Leverage Against Levers: Why New York Should Not Keep The Lever Voting Machines."

NYVV argues that our lever machines should be replaced by voter-marked paper ballots and precinct-based optical scanners as soon as the scanners pass their certification tests.

However, some of NYVV's arguments against lever machines are circular. Other arguments are more applicable to scanners than lever machines, and still others reveal misunderstandings or omission of facts.

~snip~

9. In claiming that lever machines do not comply with the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002 (“HAVA”), NYVV omits information that challenges their claim.

9.A. HAVA requires voting systems to have a “manual audit capacity.” NYVV says that lever advocates have re-defined "audit" in order to claim that lever machines are auditable.

Direct Recording Electronic voting systems (“DREs” or “touchscreens”) are used across the country, and are regarded as providing a manual audit capacity because of the end-of-election-day printout they produce. This printout summarizes the total votes cast in each race for each candidate— precisely the same content that lever machines or poll workers record on New York’s Return of Canvass form. If DREs comply with HAVA's requirement for a manual audit capacity, it is difficult to understand why NYVV says that lever machines do not.

~snip~

It is worthwhile now for our counties to:

• Urge our state legislature to rescind ERMA, the state law that requires replacement of our lever machines. Alternatively, the requirement for replacement of lever machines can be rescinded, and our standards for computerized systems can be left in place but explicitly required to apply to computerized systems only.

• Urge our congressional delegation to clarify that HAVA, the federal law that funded America's rush to electronic voting equipment, has always allowed lever machines if supplemented by accessible ballot marking devices.

• Urge our state to return the $50 million HAVA funds we accepted to replace our lever machines, while keeping the more than $170 million we accepted for other purposes.

(.pdf) http://www.wheresthepaper.org/RebutLeverage_BackToBasicsApr11_09.pdf

[Bill Bored]

1. If NYVV would spend half as much time on VOTE COUNTING as they do on TRASHING lever machines...

...we would all be a lot better off.

From the OP: "NYVV argues that our lever machines should be replaced by voter-marked paper ballots and precinct-based optical scanners as soon as the scanners pass their certification tests."

Unless they also argue for actually counting the votes, they are:

[nykym]

2. We should really find out

what members of NYVV are connected to whom in the electronic voting industry. Follow the money and all will be reveled.

[Bill Bored]

3. .