The Independent View: New York Lever Voting Machines May Still Be Around

Those pesky, antiquated, unverifiable lever machines continue to rear their ugly heads.

New York Governor Cuomo is currently considering a bill that would allow lever machines to be used for the next year in local school board elections.

This bill was sent to the Governor's desk on August 1st and currently awaits his signature.

The right to vote in elections that are accessible to all has been clearly established by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) and the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) as well as New York State law. However, there are continual attempts to undermine the use of Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) and revert to the sole use of lever machines in local elections.

The Bills, A.09321A/S07371A, would allow for the use of lever machines for another year in village, fire district, library district and other local elections.

Some Talking points from The Association of Independent Living:

- Lever machines are not being manufactured any more, not since 1982, and replacement parts are hard to come by. It is short-sighted and very poor planning to indefinitely rely on them.

- Lever machines aren't infallible. When a lever machine breaks down, it makes lines at polling places longer. Or if there is a malfunction with the counter mechanism, it may not be detected until after polls are closed.

- Using lever machines as well as the accessible voting systems is recipe for disenfranchisement. Poll workers will be more likely to forget about setting up the accessible machine causing a voter who wants to use it an embarrassing wait or worse, poll workers discovering only then they don't know the machine well enough to turn it on, or they can't find the ballots for it.

- Lever machines do not work well for voters with varying types of visual, mobility and cognitive disabilities. Voters with visual disabilities are not able to read the ballot; voters with limited mobility capacity are not able to reach and/or operate the levers; voters with certain cognitive limitations are not able to visually focus on the current ballot style associated with the old system.

- Continued use of lever machines with no end in sight is confusing to the electorate and will prolong the acclimation phase for poll workers and further delay public acceptance of the new voting systems.

The Governor has 10 days to act on this bill, so please contact Governor Cuomo's office now at 518-474-8390 (press 3) and tell him to veto bill A.09321A/S07371A.

Temporary backslides in accessibility are NOT acceptable and should not be tolerated. This legislation must be defeated, A.09321A/S07371A.