The Independent View: NYC BOE Ignores Bronx Missed Votes

Thanks to The Daily News for this post.

A Board of Elections’ highest duty is to ensure that voters get a accurate count when they exercise their right to vote.

More than six months ago, voting experts at New York University Law School’s Brennan Center detected an alarming pattern at one polling place in the South Bronx: The tallies from the electronic scanning machines at Public School 65 included high proportions of invalidated votes.

There were two possibilities: Either huge numbers of voters had improperly filled out their ballots, or at least one of the scanners had gone haywire. The board did nothing. Actually, the board did worse than nothing. It refused to check, even when asked to do so by State election officials.

Using the Freedom of Information Law, the Daily News editorial page then demanded the right to inspect ballots cast at PS 65 in the 2010 primary and general elections.

The board complied, making what may be the first time members of the public in New York State have been given permission to look over cast ballots and review how they were counted.

They discovered that voters had done their part correctly, while one of the three scanners at PS 65 misread and miscounted votes. Here are the disgraceful findings: In the September primary, the scanner processed 103 ballots and made errors on 69 of them, a failure rate approaching 70%. In the November general election, the scanner handled 289 ballots and misread votes on 156 of them, a 54% failure rate.

The two types of errors were: Identifying so-called overvotes when there was none and not counting the valid vote. Time after time, looking at photographic images of the ballots that are recorded by the scanners, ballots that were perfectly filled out: one vote for Cuomo, one vote for Eric Schneiderman, then running for attorney general, one vote for Kirsten Gillibrand, running for Senate. And, time after time, the machine had registered overvotes where none existed. For example, detecting a valid Cuomo vote while also recording phantom votes for Paladino and for the five other lesser-known candidates, plus a write-in. On other ballots, voters chose not to fill out an oval in a particular race and the machine recorded that they had filled one in. For example, a voter opted to skip the contest between Gillibrand and Democratic primary challenger Gail Goode but the scanner scored a vote for Goode.

The board and the scanner supplier, Election Systems & Software, swear the machines are accurate and that the machines are calibrated and tested before every Election Day.

That’s not what happened and the failures occurred twice. There must a complete investigation by an independent authority that examines the faulty machine and goes far into checking on the possibility of broader undetected failures.

The New York City Board of Elections cannot be trusted with the inquiry. It’s an outdated, unaccountable, mismanaged operation without a Director and dominated by the Democratic and Republican parties. It should be replaced by a professional, nonpartisan Board of Elections.