Opinion: New York Should Reject Voting Machines With Issues

(TNS) — The four-member state Board of Elections (two Democrats and two Republicans, natch) should unite as a bloc today to reject certification of a voting machine, the ExpressVote XL, that undermines the sound and practical use of paper ballots. And that’s not the only way it fails.

The commissioners claim they have no choice if the gizmo, made by Election Systems & Software, the other big industry player besides Trump boogeyman Dominion, met a set of standards put in place long ago. Besides the fact that the obsolete ExpressVote XL uses Windows 7 software from 2009, it violates New York election law by failing to let voters have ballots in Spanish or Chinese.

ExpressVote XL users select their picks on a touch screen, suboptimal in a germophobic age. Then, to comply with the requirement of a permanent paper record, the machine prints a little grocery store receipt that is visible behind a see-through plastic covering. If the voter determines that the receipt is correct, the vote is cast. If it’s wrong, the vote is canceled. But while the screen shows multiple languages, the stupid machine can only print in English. Ay, caramba.

Even if it could handle multilingual printing, it would still be a loser. The flimsy receipts are tiny and hard to see, and in a hand count would be a nightmare to tally. And the words on the receipts are just a summary. The details are in a bar code. Real paper is far superior.

Then there’s the problem that, as more and more people are now voting by mail, the new machine would usher in two very different kinds of ballots: One via mail and one in person.

As we said almost exactly a year ago, Jan. 20, the Legislature must override the board if the ExpressVote XL is approved.

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