New York must work on HAVA

{"Body Text Edit"/}The Help America Vote Act of 2002 is a strange beast indeed. Depending on how you look at it, HAVA is one or all of the following:

a) A response by the federal government to the voting problems experienced in the 2000 presidential election;

b) An effort to make voting more accessible to people with disabilities;

c) An example of the federal government interfering in states' rights; or

d) a four-letter word.

Since the passage of the act more than five years ago, states have scrambled to get up to speed on direct recording electronic voting machines, or DREs; optical scanners; puff-sip interfaces; and other high-tech features that have been proposed to replace older systems such as punch-card ballots and lever machines.

While other states' solutions range from the low-tech (Oregon votes entirely by absentee ballot) to the technologically advanced (Allegheny County, Pa., recently upgraded to puff-sip technology, allowing voters to cast ballots without using their hands or arms), New Yorkers stepped into the same, old lever-style booths in 2007.

This nostalgic experience has come at a cost; New York shares the distinction with Alabama and Maine of having been sued by the federal Department of Justice for noncompliance with HAVA. Alabama and Maine have reached agreements with the feds, leaving New York to stand alone.

New Yorkers have voiced concerns about electronic voting that are echoed across the nation _ concerns of inaccuracy, technical difficulty, tampering, fraud, voter confusion, expense and more. Now it seems the state has run out of time. Election officials will soon meet with federal DOJ lawyers and federal District Judge Gary Sharpe of the Northern District of New York to determine what type of voting machines New York will adopt.

There's little doubt that the Dec. 20 meeting will result in a mandate for which machines the state will use. The question of "when" still looms large.

No one seems to think the state will get its act together in time for next year's primary vote, which will be in February instead of April for the first time. We also accept that new machines may not be ready for the 2008 presidential election. There is no sense pushing through new technology if it is only going to fail on Election Day. But work shouldn't slow down even if the deadline isn't November; testing and training on new machines can go on even as the state prepares to use old ones in 2008.

It is embarrassing for New York to lag so far behind the rest of the country, but there may be a silver lining. Early adopters of voting technology have suffered through bugs that manufacturers promised will be eradicated from future models. New York had the option of retaining most of its lever-style machines, as the law only requires one handicapped-accessible machine per polling place, but chose to go to an all-electronic voting system.

We hope New York can learn from other states and find a workable system within a reasonable time period _ one that works for all voters.