|
WILL THIS ELECTION BE THE LEVER'S LAST?
Mike McCagg
ccSCOOP News
10-07-09 – 12:30 p.m. - Voters heading to the polls in Columbia County on November 3 may be using lever voting machines for the last time in a general election.
County elections officials are preparing this year for a routine use of both lever machines and ballot marking devices [BMDs]—electronic devices that have been available at all polling sites in the county since the primary elections of 2008. However, unless state officials relent, the county may be required to replace the traditional lever devices, which have been part of voting in the United States for more than a century, with optical scanning devices.
"Generally speaking the state is not supportive of keeping the lever machines," said Columbia County Democratic Election Commission Virginia Martin. “This could be the last general election with lever machines." |
|
|
Martin, Republican Election Commissioner Don Kline, and the Columbia County Board of Supervisors have mounted an effort to keep the lever machines and block state attempts to force a switch to the optical scanning devices. County officials, along with groups across the country, say the optical scanning devices are more costly to use and maintain and are more likely to result in a fraudulent or error-ridden vote count.
"We found just paying for the paper ballots for the optical scan would cost us another $40,000," Martin told ccSCOOP on Tuesday.
“The lever machines are difficult to hack into, make it difficult to throw an election, and provide a paper trail,” said Martin. "With the optical scan devices, it tabulates the vote results for you. Essentially, it counts it in secret, and we don't know how it is counting or what is counting. We don't know if the computer is programmed correctly, or if it was subject to a viral attack."
Dozens of reports from computer scientists corroborate that optical scan software can be undetectably manipulated to create false election reports which would not be recognized by election officials or the public. An audit will be mandated by state law, but many feel that detecting fraud or error would require a more carefully designed audit than the one being suggested by the state, and such an audit would be both expensive and labor intensive.
“The county [election] boards are very concerned about the cost of doing an audit, which, if it is well done, should catch any tabulating problem there might be on the part of the ballots,” Martin said.
As the state moves closer to requiring that all counties use optical scanning devices, many counties across the state are participating in a pilot test of the new technology this November. The neighboring counties of Albany, Greene, and Dutchess are participating in the pilot, but Columbia County is not. Earlier this year, Greene and Dutchess counties, as well as Columbia County, adopted resolutions opposing the use of optical scanning devices.
“We anticipate is that in 2010 we will all be required to use the optical scanners,” Martin said.
Martin also stressed that anyone wishing to use an electronic voting machine this year in Columbia County may chose to use the ballot marking device [BMD]. Addressing the misperception that those machines may only be used by the disabled, Martin emphatically stated that their use is open to all. She also said those machines don’t pose the problems or concerns that the optical scanning devices do.
“The BMDs are certified, and we are full steam ahead with them,” she said.
|
