Contrast this story at Daring Fireball, refering to this “Can You Count on Voting Machines?” story at the New York Times, with this article from our local paper regarding New York State’s tardiness in complying with the Help America Vote Act. Choice lines in the first two graphs:
“State officials took another step in New York’s slowest-in-the-nation process of implementing an election-modernization law by filing a court-ordered timetable for having accessible voting equipment by September of this year and replacements for lever voting machines by fall 2009.
Board of Elections officials, who were excoriated by U.S. District Court Judge Gary Sharpe last month for running afoul of the Help America Vote Act, said the plan calls for the board to decide Jan. 23 which machines counties can choose for the disabled.” [My emphasis, especially on “excoriated.”]
I’m all for accessible voting machines, if indeed our level-based ones and whatever alternatives are offered are not sufficient. But I’m a computer person, and as in the Daring Fireball commentary, I’m generally against implementing these new electronic voting systems just for the sake of having something new. There seem to be major problems with the systems that have been in the news, and I have a hard time wanting to lay our democracy on them at this time. Therefore, I have to wonder if New York State’s delay isn’t actually for the better.
(I wish I had a link handy at this very moment for the simple paper-based system I came across a few months ago, which sounded like a great solution that allowed anonymity, automated counting, and a verifiable vote.)