The New York City Board of Elections voted Tuesday to buy the Election Systems and Software electronic voting machines as a way to improve how the city counts votes and to speed up lines at polling places.
Six voted in favor of ES&S; one voted in favor of the Dominion system, and two abstained.
The contract is estimated to cost about $50 million.
The board will buy between 5,000 and 7,000 machines.
With the new system, voters will fill in a paper ballot and then feed the ballot into the machine, which will tally the votes.
The machines are supposed to be in place for the September primary.
Prior to the vote, Public Advocate Bill de Blasio unveiled a new voter outreach program that he hopes the board will implement to educate voters about the new system.
“As much as we’re excited about these changes, we’re very, very concerned that a change of this magnitude could have a number of unintended consequences,” said the public advocate. “And it might not serve to engage all the voters of this city as we need it to.”
The changes were needed to put the city and state in compliance with federal regulations that were approved after the controversy that surrounded the 2000 presidential election.
New York State is the only place in the nation that has yet to comply with these regulations, which were laid out in the Help America Vote Act.
(Source: NY1)
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3 Responses
Will the privacy of the individual voter be protected that is the question. I liked the old system. There were never long lines in my voting precinct so I don’t know what they are talking about.
all I want to know is if ACORN backs this up.
Interestingly, the machines arrived with only one button next to the name Bloomberg. The Board of Elections has hired a company to modify the machines.