By YANCEY ROY
November 11, 2005
Not much is often needed to describe a routine government board meeting that starts late and never accomplishes as much as it was supposed to.
But the gathering last week of the state Board of Elections, seemingly dull, had more value than first seemed. In fact, it served as a microcosm on how New York has fumbled, stumbled and bumbled the selection of new voting machines.
How so?
Late starts. Fuzzy information. Deadlines missed. And missed again.
The upshot: A year away from the 2006 statewide elections, no one is certain how the process of voting in New York will look or how smoothly it will work.
That's not primarily the fault of the Board of Elections. Gov. George Pataki and the state Legislature have accomplished most of the bickering and dawdling. But the meanderings of the board serve as a nice snapshot.
The confab was scheduled to begin at 11 a.m. Instead, it started at 12:40 p.m.
No official was in site for the first hour. The agenda wasn't immediately available.
Meanwhile, the public sat in the figurative dark and waited. The gathered few (media, advocates for the disabled and the League of Women Voters) killed time first chatting about the issues then descending into small talk about jazz clubs, house repairs and vacations.
Board staff ambled in around noon. But the members of the board, the ones with the power, weren't to be seen. Soon, soon, the staff said.
By 12:30, the members of the politically divided board were meeting in separate rooms. From a hallway, onlookers could see Republicans Neil Kelleher and Helena Donahue talking in one glass-door room and Democrat board member Evelyn Aquila gabbing with staff members in another.
The wall separating the two doors sported a framed color photo of the State Capitol.
Once they began the meeting, they tripped up on hiring a company to test the new machines. The reason? Aquila spent the weekend at her brother's house in Mineola and, before coming to Albany, never went to her Brooklyn home where the briefing materials were delivered.
So she asked for a delay.
Clearly agitated, the others asked for a better explanation.
"Well, it's the first time I've been at my brother's house in two years. He has a new house," Aquila said.
She refused to vote on "something I haven't read," postponing the matter and threatening an already-tardy timetable.
The board is supposed to have four members, two Republicans and two Democrats (one spot is vacant). To pass anything, three votes are necessary. Compromises are required — or else one side can stonewall.
Sound like the state Legislature?
The Republican-led Senate and the Democrat-controlled Assembly squabbled for years over new voting machines (mandated by Congress after the Florida fiasco over the presidential election in 2000). They missed every federal deadline and risked $225 million in aid. Pataki battled with Democrats over appointments to the board, holding things up for months.
Leave it to the counties
And in the end, lawmakers didn't even make a decision. They punted to county governments. They said the board would draw up a set of qualifications for acceptable machines, then let counties choose. Hey, it's not like they're dealing with a key element of democracy, right?
The board has hog-wallowed too. It was supposed to create a citizens advisory committee with certain interest groups represented. But it failed to appoint someone from the Independent Living Council, an advocacy group for the disabled. The group sued.
Here's the kicker. At the meeting, the staff essentially told the board that the council submitted names for the appointment, that the staff found one acceptable and that putting this person on the advisory committee would terminate the lawsuit. A no-brainer, yes?
No. The board declined to act, saying it would let the courts decide. Go figure.
Yancey Roy is a columnist for Gannett News Service. Write him at 150 State St., Albany, NY 12207.