By Jill Colvin
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CITY HALL — With less than a week to go before Primary Day, the city's new voting machines continue to draw criticism and confusion.
Local leaders and advocates worry the new optical scanner voting machines, which are replacing the traditional lever machines that had been in use since the 1960s, have technical problems that may leave votes uncounted. Plus, they're concerned voter are not prepared for what's in store for them when they head to the polls on Sept. 14.
"The voters of New York City will experience the most dramatic change in voting in over 50 years," Alex Camarada, director of public policy and advocacy at good-government group Citizens Union, said at a City Council hearing this week on the new machines. "The larger pool of voters should be better prepared for participating in the general election."
Every state was required by federal law to upgrade its voting machines in the wake of the 2000 presidential election. With its switch to the optical scanner machines, New York becomes the last state to comply with the law.
Using the new machines, voters make their selections on paper ballots and then feed the sheets into scanners, which register their votes. But some critics say there are issues with the scanners.
For example, if a voter accidentally selects more than one candidate in a single race, the machine will present the voter with two buttons: green and red. If they press the red button, the voter can fix their ballot. But if they press green, the ballot cast and the vote on that race will be tossed out. Trouble is, the machine doesn't explain what the buttons mean.
"It's counter-intuitive," City Councilwoman Gale Brewer of the Upper West Side said at the hearing.
The presentation of two questions to appear on the ballot in November is also an issue. The city's Charter Review Commission thought it had to cram its questions onto a single page to accommodate the new machines. So, it bundled seven separate questions into one question that voters will have to accept or reject at once.
The Board of Elections said it will be prepared on primary day.
So far, more than 16,000 voters have taken part in roughly 275 voting machine demonstrations, said Board of Elections spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez. The board also started rolling out a massive ad campaign on television, in newspapers, subways, buses and cabs on Aug. 31 to inform voters about the polling changes.
"The Board of Elections has done everything possible to ensure this election goes as well as possible," George Gonzalez, the Board's new executive director, told the committee hearing. "We are doing what we need to do."
Gonzalez said that while many voters are apprehensive about the new machines, once they try them, their fears usually disappear.
"It becomes a piece of cake," he said.
