By Jon Schuppe
DNAinfo Reporter/Producer
CITY COUNCIL — City Council leaders continued their attack on the Board of Elections Tuesday, releasing the results of a survey that showed more than a third of voters last week were confused by the new computerized polling system.
"The responses to the survey still indicate that there are significant problems…the Board of Elections has to begin to address," Council Speaker Christine Quinn said at a news conference with Councilwoman Gale Brewer and good-government groups Tuesday.
The survey of 1,200 voters asked them to share their experiences after leaving the polls on Nov. 2. Thirty-four percent said they found the ballots "difficult to read or confusing." Many complained that the print was too small and the layout hard to understand.
Asked if poll workers offered them a "privacy sleeve" to cover ballots, 22 percent of voters said no. One called the experience "weirdly open, exposed."
But the experience wasn’t as bad as the Sept. 14 primary, the debut of the new electronic voting machines. Voters reported that many polling places opened late, poll workers seemed poorly trained and machines rejected ballots.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg called the primary a "royal screw-up," and described the Board as "an agency run amok," comparing it to Tammany Hall, a symbol of New York City government’s corrupt past.
A City Council committee headed by Brewer called Board of Elections Executive Director George Gonzalez to testify about the glitches.
During that hearing, Gonzalez said it was too expensive to collect data on voters' problems and refused to post copies of ballots online to avoid confusion at the polls, Quinn said.
Quinn called Gonzalez "inept" and his answers "bogus." He was fired by the Board a week before this month’s general election.
In response, the Council organized the survey and enlisted volunteers from good-government groups to carry it out. The final cost was $40, for an Internet tool that allowed questioners to enter the results online, officials said.
Quinn, Brewer and government watchdogs pressed the Board to collect data on voters’ experiences at the polls and to publish them and share with city agencies.
That includes a survey like the one the council organized.
"This is something the Board should already be doing," Quinn said.
A spokeswoman for the Board did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The next step for the Council is to come up with proposed solutions, some of which will have be approved by the state Legislature.
Quinn said she believes the Council, which provides funding for the Board and appoints its members, can force other changes on its own.
The speaker will formally share the results of the survey with the full Council in a meeting later this month.
