Cross posted from The Albany Project
The Times Unions Capital Confidential blog is reporting that the State Board of Elections has agreed on three optical scan compatiable machines as acceptable machines for the various county boards of election to select from.
BOE has chosen its voting machines...
January 24, 2008 at 11:30 am by Irene Jay Liu
...and the winners are:
Sequoia Imagecast, Premier Automark with modification requested by the Republicans, the ES&S Automark with modification requested by the Republicans.
All three machines are optical scan machines, none of them are DREs.
Counties must choose their machines by Feb. 8. In a funny twist of irony, if the counties do not choose by that deadline, then the state BOE will attempt to mediate between the two party commissioners to make a decision.
To be clear, this is the list of the approved vendors. Each county will be able to choose the machine they want from the approved list.
How this agreement came about after the debacle yesterday is unknown at this time.
The Times Unions report can be read here.
Bo Lipari of New Yorkers for Verified Voting reports on his observation of yesterdays events at the State Board of Elections on his blog.
Protecting vendors, not voters
"As I sit here, I’m embarrassed. I’m 56 years old, I have been a New Yorker for 56 years, and I’m embarrassed on behalf of the State of New York. I write these words tonight and they come from my heart, but I am not the first to say them. Today they come from me because I witnessed an appalling display of how willing are some in the State Board of Elections to represent the interests of DRE vendors, even when this directly conflicts with the interests of voters and the requirements of state law..."
Read the rest here....
For his reviews of the various machines submitted for consideration see this pdf report.
For the problems with the Liberty DRE that the Republicans tried to force on us yesterday seethis pdf report.
More information to come but it looks like New York will be a PB/OS, paper ballot/optical scan voting system state.
Great work and huge congratulations to all the activists that have worked so hard the last few years to make this happen. And Thank you to Commissioner Doug Kellner for standing firm yesterday and working to bring this victory about.
UPDATE:
This is just preliminary based on the brief entry on the TU blog but it appears that New York will be a paper ballot/optical scan voting state.
Let me qualify that... I believe that today's decision, which had a court ordered deadline of tomorrow, was in regard to ballot marking devices to made available for this years fall election cycle.
It is not the final decision.
I should make that clear. It is not the final decision. However, a significant amount of money is going to be spent on these ballot marking devices for this years election.
Reversing ground and later purchasing DRE's would (most likely) make this decision and these purchases redundant. In other words they would be deciding to throw these machines and this money away.
The impact of this decision is that it is now highly likely that New York State will later purchase the opscan machines that are compatible with these machines thereby locking New York state into a paper ballot, optical scan voting system.
I'll wait to hear official word from the Board and analysis from Bo but that is my preliminary take on what has just happened.
UPDATE II:
It appears that Liberty and Avanti, two DRE venors rejected by the State Board, will file a lawsuit.
UPDATE III: Bo Lipari of NYVV weighs in via email:
"First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then
you win."
-Mohandas Gandhi
I'm pleased to announce that after five years of hard work on the part of
voting integrity advocates, New York State has rejected DREs and approved
only the Automark and the Sequoia ImageCast scanner/marker for use in 2008
polling places. This momentous decision by the State Board of Elections
virtually guarantees that New York State will vote on paper ballots and
ballot scanners when it finally replaces lever machines in 2009.
Those of you who were with us at the beginning five years ago know what an
enormous victory this is. When I first started traveling, presenting and
advocating in New York, election officials, political parties, and the media
assumed that New York State was going to be a DRE state. Precinct scanners
were not under discussion, and only DREs were offered by vendors. Our
experience over these five years reflects the truth of Gandhi's statement -
indeed we were ignored, then laughed at, then fought bitterly by the voting
machine vendors and their supporters in the election establishment. But
finally, truth has prevailed, and what seemed like an impossible dream in
2003 has been made real by our hard work - New York State will be a paper
ballot state.
Just yesterday, it seemed like high powered lobbyists had scuttled our hopes
once again as they maneuvered to keep DREs in the mix even though they were
in clear violation of New York's laws(see my blog entry describing
yesterday's events at http://nyvv.org/...
But this morning, when the Board reconvened, it was immediately obvious from
the commissioners opening statements that those who were pushing for the
DREs had conceded defeat. No small amount of thanks is due to Commissioner
Doug Kellner (D), who firmly held the line yesterday and during a long night
of backroom political maneuvering, vowing he would never approve the DRE
submissions which did not fulfill the requirements of New York State
election law regarding accessible voting machines.
While technically it is possible for a DRE vendor to submit and win approval
for the 2009 lever machine replacement, this is highly unlikely as at least
half of the HAVA funds will be spent on scanner compatible ballot markers.
Since all the approved systems are components of a precinct based scanner
system the least expensive path, and the only sensible one is for the
counties to complete their HAVA implementation with paper ballots and
scanners. We've learned to never be complacent, but this time we have reason
to be confident that the scanner compatible choices of today will inevitably
lead to paper ballots for all New York voters tomorrow.
My deepest thanks to everyone who fought this long, difficult battle. This
is only round 1, and I promise you we will have much, much more to do to
guarantee that our elections belong to the public, and are transparent and
observable. But for today, let's break out the champagne, relax, and
celebrate this great victory. What was once only a slogan representing what
we were fighting for, has now become a reality - Paper Ballots for New York!
Congratulations friends. Together we have changed the course of New York
States election history, and 12 million registered voters in the Empire
State will vote on paper ballots, not DREs.
-Bo Lipari