(NY) How Albany picks a new voting machine

Syracuse Post-Standard

How Albany picks a new voting machine

Monday, May 02, 2005

By Erik Kriss

There's a million-dollar battle raging over what kinds of voting machines New Yorkers will use starting next year.

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The touch-screen machines cost about $8,000 each, and with 20,000 lever machines to be replaced, State Board of Elections spokesman Lee Daghlian puts the total cost of touch-screens at about $160 million. Optical scanners cost $5,500 to $6,000, but critics say the need to keep buying paper ballots would eventually make them far more expensive.

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Sequoia Voting Systems Inc. has spent more than $300,000 on a lobbying firm run by Jeff Buley, the counsel for the State Republican Committee.

Election Systems & Software Inc. has shelled out more than $200,000, using Buley and another top Albany firm, Davidoff and Malito.

And Diebold Election Systems Inc. has spent $225,000 on Albany's well-known Greenberg Traurig firm.

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http://www.syracuse.com/news/poststandard/index.ssf?/base/news-0/1115023330293390.xml&coll=1

I liked the lever machines.

there was never a problem to my knowledge, why did they have to change? It's probably too hard for republicans to cheat with them. That would be my guess.

THe state loses money if they do not convert their voting machines by 2006. With Elliot Spitzer as AG hopefully we will get honest machines.

Best thing is to go with paper ballots and Optical Scanners at the precinct, tested publicly before the election and hand counted randomly afterward. Or of course, hand count them all!

It's almost impossible to independently test a DRE on Election Day. You either stand there and vote a few hundred times to see if it's working properly, or you let the machine "test" itself.

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The Village Voice says Buley was among the bullies in Florida 2000,

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0104,barrett,21670,1.html


And Ithaca Journal mentions he served as an election atty for the Bush-Cheney campaign in New York.

http://www.theithacajournal.com/news/stories/20040805/localnews/980708.html