Back to the vintage voting machines in NYC ...

[Princess Turandot]

it made me feel warm and cuddly. Swinging that three foot lever back and forth really makes you feel like you voted! I didn't realize they were doing that.

I was the 2nd voter in my ED: de Blasio, Stringer, Brewer, Squadron.

[dipsydoodle]

1. I still prefer our UK stuff

aka a soft pencil and a piece of paper.

[Cleita]

7. That's what I wish we did.

Although my precinct does use paper ballots, they still are scanned through a voting machine although it would probably be hard to rig them since a hand count, if there was a close election, would show a discrepancy if the machines were being used to cheat.

[brooklynite]

11. On average, how many races are you voting for at once?

Here in the US, you could be voting for a dozen different races and a long list of referenda, and people want an immediate public count for all of them.

[Wilms]

13. "an immediate public count"

And what they got is an immediate private count with propriety software.

[grahamhgreen]

2. Hooo - ray!!!

[Cooley Hurd]

3. I really miss them too...

I'd love to find an old one to buy on eBay.

[brooklynite]

4. When will you be going back to rotary phones?

Didn't you love that clicking sound? Really makes you feel like you made a phone call!

[Princess Turandot]

12. Errrr..

My comment was meant to be nostalgic, nothing more. I had no problem with the scanned ballots (except, perhaps, for the print being a wee bit small).

But thanks for the reply.

[brooklynite]

5. They went back to the lever machines because they're too incompetent to count paper ballots...

...if they need to go to a runoff, they'll need to know the new candidates by next week.

State says they MUST go back to scanned ballots for November.

[Wilms]

9. Wrong.

They went back to levers because of how time consuming (putting aside how potentially fraud prone via ballot definition file manipulation) reprogramming the scanners are.

And that "clicking" comment you made above. It reminds me of a rep from New Yorkers for (un)Verified Voting, who helped push for electronic voting, when she said she "knows" hers vote was counted by the scanner because the screen on the machine said so. How "verified" is that?

There are criticism to make of the NYC BoE, but "they're too incompetent to count paper ballots" is suggesting an ignorance about the process. Very few jurisdictions count paper ballots, even to audit. Rather, it's the machines that do while we sit back and assume everything is OK.

And it's not.

[brooklynite]

15. And the REASON they can't...

...is that in the event the scanned count was too close, they couldn't reliably hand-count the paper ballots in time, to know whose names to program into the machine.

NYC Board Of Elections Finds Nearly 1,600 Brooklyn Ballots Never Counted In Nov. 2012
http://www.nydailynews.com/blogs/dailypolitics/2013/07/nyc-board-of-elections-finds-nearly-1600-brooklyn-ballots-never-counted-in-nov

[Wilms]

17. The levers don't have that issue.

So it's another advantage they have.

[brooklynite]

18. Except that they're BREAKING...

requiring election workers to give out paper ballots.

[Wilms]

19. We'll see at what rate as the reports come in.

Will it be a rate much different than scanners break? And when the scanners are ten years old...LOL!

And about those emergency paper ballots. Will they be hand counted?? Or run through trade secret software?? That is THE distinction.

[hrmjustin]

20. They will be hand counted.

[Wilms]

21. Excellent.

Now if only they'd do that in the general when the scanners will be used.

[hrmjustin]

22. Yeah I am not a fan of scanners. I like the old machines.

[iandhr]

6. I just voted on one.

I remember when I was a kid my mom would take me to vote and I would love to pull the lever.


This was the first time I got to use one for my own vote.

[Kablooie]

8. I've never seen one in my life.

Here in CA we always have had to fill in circles with an ink stamp.
We've never had the electronic screens either.

[brooklynite]

16. The incredible irony is that NY bought the machines from Florida...

...when they replaced them with the "state of the art" punch card machines in the 60s.

[Javaman]

10. I'm jealous. nt

[hrmjustin]

14. I was number 63 at 2PM. The voting machine was dirty and hard to read.

Voted de Blasio, Stringer, James, and K Thompson for DA.