Owego NY will hand counting their March 16 election

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

Just so you'll know. An opportunity for someone to get the data on costs and labor from start to finish. It is a small election that would more easily lend itself to HCPB.


Owego Brings Paper Ballots Back (video available at link)
Mar 11, 2010
Instead of pulling a lever on a machine, voters in Owego will mark a single X or a single check.

"In December 2009 the new voting machines at the Tioga County Board of Elections became certified, at that point the lever machines became outdated, illegal to use," said Village Clerk Treasurer Lynne Mieczkowski.

Mieczkowski says no one in Tioga County is trained to run programming on new electronic machines.

So it has to use paper ballots.
...
Once they fill out their ballot, they'll drop it into this lock box.
...
"At the end of the day as long as every vote is counted and people mark the ballot correctly and their vote is counted how they want to vote, then that's fine," said Gavin.

http://www.wbng.com/news/local/87393852.html

[Wilms]

1. This is a wonderfully bizarre story.

While I applaud the use of HCPB, I wonder what, if any of the exceptions to the law, they are claiming here. Even the assumption that levers are "illegal" doesn't with stand at least one county's continued use while it ramps up electronic vote counting.

And you are right. A good chance to have a look at some good ole hand counts.

http://www.elections.state.ny.us/NYSBOE/download/law/2009NYElectionLaw.pdf

[WillYourVoteBCounted]

2. what bugs me Wilms

is that many days when I send out the news, sometimes there are several articles of importance in one single days news, and they get no other attention that I can see, just the mention in that one day.

And I am shocked sometimes at what I see, although awareness does seem to be increasing.

[Wilms]

3. That's bugged me for some time, too.

But much of the election reform 'discussion' happens elsewhere. That's ok, I guess. But there's something we lost when we lost the dynamism of this forum.

[demodonkey]

5. "But there's something we lost when we lost the dynamism of this forum"

'Ya THINK ????

[Historic NY]

4. Down in Orange they are sending out letters to get election inspectors...

I guess all the blue haired ladies don't like them new "puters". My neighbor a retired electrician got one. I had a lot of them tell me that back during the 08 election that they were giving up doing the polls because of the new fangled contraptions.

Funny there just was a local school election and they used the old lever machines. They didn't get enough machines (perhaps on purpose) and had long lines when the machines locked up at 999.

http://www.ulsterpublishing.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=article&articleID=507327

There has been very little interest in them and I think the County BOE is going to have lots of problems transitioning. They had them out the last election but mostly it was for the handicapped, none were used in my towns 24 districts.

Its going to be interesting come the fall.