We have yet another potential mess concerning elections in New York City on the new optical-scan computer tabulation systems which recently replaced the mechanical lever machines used by the city for decades.
This time, the problem relates to the upcoming citywide elections in September which, if no candidate wins more than 40% in any of the primary races, a runoff will be required by state law, just two weeks later.
This is now a huge problem for the city, since there is concern that it could be all but impossible to re-prepare and fully re-test the computer optical-scan systems in the short time after the primary and before the runoff elections. It has left some, including Mayor Michael Bloomberg, as well as the NYC Board of Elections, seemingly regretting the move away from lever machines and considering bringing them out of mothballs for this year’s runoffs.
“The computers just can’t be programmed and readied in time for a runoff,” ABC7’s Dave Evans notes in his video report on Monday (posted below). “The old machines can be.”
Further adding to the problems, says State Board of Elections Commissioner Doug Kellner “If there is a very close primary election, it may not be possible to determine the candidates in the runoff election in the time frame available.”
Since New York state was the last in the nation to “upgrade” their voting systems from the old lever systems to new proprietary computer optical-scan systems over the last several years, the move has caused nothing but headaches in New York City and across the state…
New systems cause new problems for New York…
For example, back in 2008, as the new systems began to arrive, just 15% of the new, $11,000/piece electronic Ballot Marking Devices (BMDs) for disabled voters actually arrived in working order in Nassau County. All the others were “unusable or…require[d] major repairs,” according to the County Attorney at the time.
During the 2009 Special Election to fill the NY-23 U.S. House seat vacated by Kirsten Gillibrand after she was named to fill the U.S. Senate seat of then newly appointed Sec. of State Hillary Clinton, unsubstantiated rumors of a “virus” in the new optical-scan systems, used for the very first time in the district during that race, sullied confidence in the computer-reported results. [We covered the story extensively at the time for the right-leaning Gouverneur Times which is now, unfortunately, out or business.]
In late 2010, the state court ordered that a manual “recount” of paper ballots had to be stopped and that unverified computer tallies were to be used as “official” in a New York state Senate race where just 451 votes, out of some 84,000 ballots cast, separated the two top candidates. The election would result in Republicans gaining the majority in that body that year.
Last year, after a public records request, the New York Daily News discovered that during the 2010 statewide September primary elections, some op-scan systems in the South Bronx experienced a failure rate of 70%. In the November general election that year, the failure rate was found to be 54%. Thousands of valid votes went uncounted entirely.
When the new op-scan systems rolled out in New York City itself in 2010, long lines, “reports of broken and missing scanners,” and computer “system errors” resulted in what Mayor Bloomberg at the time described as a “royal mess.”
All of those royal messes might have been avoided, had the state simply listened to the Election Integrity advocates at the time who were attempting to persuade the state to stick with their old tried and true mechanical lever voting machines, rather than move to secret vote counts by computer tabulators. The advocates had tried to warn the state to ignore a wholly inaccurate “legal advisory” issued in 2005 by the woefully compromised U.S. Elections Assistance Commission (EAC) which had incorrectly advised that mechanical lever voting machines did not meet the requirements of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002.
Even today, some elections official in New York refuse to certify races tabulated on the new, unreliable electronic systems, insisting on a hand-count before they will sign off on official results.
Back to the future…
Which brings us to the latest royal mess in New York City surrounding their upcoming September elections which has lead Bloomberg to pine for the old lever machines. In fact, using those systems has been presented as one of the possibilities examined by the NYC Board of Elections as a solution to the latest woes, as explained in ABC7’s Monday night report below…
“We used to be able to get, within a couple of hours, a count. Now you can’t get it within a couple of months,” Bloomberg complains in the report above. “This is ridiculous.”
The old lever machines, still stored in a Brooklyn warehouse, “could easily be called up for a runoff this fall because they’re uncomplicated, easy to use,” reports ABC7’s Evans. “The new computers aren’t.”
In response, Dick Dadey, Executive Director of NY good-government group Citizens Union calls the lever machines “unreliable.” He goes on to argue that they “haven’t been used in three or four years, do not count votes correctly [and] would cause more problems than they would solve.”
While there are various problems that can crop up with the old lever machines, they are very rare, and limited in scope only to the single precinct where the problem occurred. Unlike the secret-vote counting computer systems that Dadey seems to be arguing for, the suggestion that they “do not count votes correctly,” is simply wrong.
In ABC7’s report, Frederic Umane, chief of the NYC Board of Elections, calls for simply “getting rid of the runoff” entirely.
As usual, here we have a case of technological driving the democracy, rather than the other way around.
Other proposed solutions for the problem have included calls for the state legislature to move the September primary up to an earlier date (Republicans would like it in August, Democrats prefer June before folks go out of town for the summer), to allow time to reprogram the systems between the two elections if a runoff becomes necessary.
Still others have called for the horrible and incredibly confusing idea of an Instant Runoff, using a process known as Ranked Choice Voting (RCV) which requires voters to select first and second choices, with the votes of losing first choice candidates being shifted to others until one candidate finally reaches the required percentage to be declared the winner. Schemes like that — in a country where we have enough trouble adding 1 + 1 + 1 in a way that the citizenry can know votes have been tabulated correctly — have been tried and failed all over the country. They can also be gamed and lead to candidates “winning” even though they’ve received less than a majority — even less than a plurality — of the vote. (Here is an excellent YouTube video channel with a bunch of great videos explaining the many problems with Instant Runoff Voting and RCV.) Think NYC has problems with their elections now? Try adding RCV to the mix.
All of those “solutions”, however, would call for legislative action by the state, which is believed to be unlikely.
So, yesterday, here’s how the NYC Board of Elections decided to handle the problem for now, according to WNYC…
Ultimately the board opted to forge ahead with optical scanners, through a vote of 8 to 1, because that option only required the State BOE to approve the city’s plan for reduced testing between the primary and runoff.
Yes, that’s right. The “solution” settled on, for now, by the BOE, is to do less testing of the oft-failed, easily-hacked, computer tabulation systems they are already using, rather than move to a simpler, cheaper, overseeable option like the tried and true lever machines, or, better yet, simply hand-counting results, as per “Democracy’s Gold Standard”.
And, as if all of that wasn’t dumb enough, there was this closing note from WYNC: “A primary generally costs the city around $20 million dollars, according to Board officials. Using the scanner option, the runoff will cost that much, plus an additional $8.5 million.”
Brilliant. The September elections in NYC should be fun. What could possibly go wrong?
Ugh, FTA:
When will they ever learn?
When a Republican really gets screwed by those machines, Ernie. Bank on it.
Ah, but Republicans ARE getting screwed too. The hope is now that both parties may try to do something about it (but I wouldn’t “count” on it).
According to the paper of record in New York when it comes to voting issues (that’s the Daily News of course — not that other rag),
“After a vote count lasting 73 days, the Democratic candidate has declared victory in an upstate state Senate race by 18 votes out of 126,342 cast. The outcome is not to be trusted.”
The News goes on to say, “The problem is that the supposedly infallible vote scanners make mistakes.”
It only took the New York mainstream media about a decade to reach this conclusion after being propagandized for that long by election officials and certain advocates who had no clue how to verify computer-generated election results — and perhaps no intention of ever doing so — even as they insisted on doing away with our lever voting system.
Better late than never I guess.
Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/opinion/count-vote-article-1.1242996
The last NY election I voted in was the 2008 presidential election (plus whomever and whatever else was on the ballot at the time) and that was likely the last time the state used the old machines. I loved those machines because if I made a mistake I could just flip the switch and fix my mistake before finally submitting my ballot.
In this last presidential election, I had the displeasure of experiencing for the first time the California ballot, which requires the voter to use a permanent marker. Being inexperienced, I went through THREE ballots before I got it right. But I suppose that was still better than the latest technology.
It is a shame that NY decided to try these optical systems when the old machines are so reliable. I am a true believer in new technology and finding a way to incorporate it into any and all aspects of life, but technology is not necessarily up to the job and we have too many cases where it has hampered the electoral process.
What is perhaps worse is the feeling of a lack of confidence in these systems. It is the psychological effect on the voter that is perhaps most damaging to the general consciousness of the American electorate. We need to believe that the most vital part of our democracy is protected. With these systems, it is hard to really believe. I hope that NYC goes back to the old machines.
Off the main topic, but I think the issues surrounding ranked choice voting, or the alternative vote, are a lot more complicated than depicted above and in the linked videos. I’m not necessarily advocating for this system, but I don’t think it’s justified to call it “horrible and incredibly confusing.” Let’s not forget that candidates can win with less than a majority in general elections without runoffs, and that runoffs, when held, generally have very low turnout. The fact that some people have difficulty understanding this system at first does not mean that it could not be successful in the long term. Australia has successfully used the alternative vote in legislative elections for many years, and their electoral system in general seems to work much better than ours in the US.
Ooooooooo, Ooooooooooooooh, Seriously, Car 54 where are you? 🙂
Isn’t stealing elections the biggest crime against Democracy? And what’s that law again about treason ????????????????????
FREE AND FAIR ELECTIONS SHOULD BE THE BIG TENT WE CAN ALL GATHER UNDER. IT IS TIME TO COME TOGETHER.
That Eli @5 takes issue with Brad’s description ranked choice voting (RCV) reflects a failure to pay close attention to the fact that each of the epic failures of e-voting entails instances in which our privatized electoral system has failed to accurately perform the most elementary form of addition: 1 + 1 + 1, etc.
Brad furnished links to his core contention that RCV can “be gamed and lead to candidates ‘winning’ even though they’ve received less than a majority — even less than a plurality — of the vote,” and how RCV has repeatedly been “tried and failed.”
Unless and until we solve the basic problem of transparency so that we can insure that all votes lawfully cast are accurately counted, the introduction of additional complexity via RCV is a fool’s errand.
In my county in New York- where I’d been sending the BOE commissioner BradBlog items for years- they recently hired a Republican who makes a living fixing computers. Wonder who they’ll refer to for expert advice?
This subject is enormously complex. Here are notes on just two aspects.
I. Precinct summability
===begin clips
“IRV cannot be â€counted in precincts†– only centralized counting is possible – necessitating a big change to procedures and a security hit because a small central conspiracy then can throw elections (whereas fraud at a precinct level is inherently limited in scope, and in the aggregate will partially cancel out due to the fact that the administrators of different precincts will be of different parties).
“This can also cause delays in getting final results. For instance, this message appeared on the San Francisco city government website for several weeks after their 2008 RCV elections.
‘Due to the requirement that all ballots must be centrally tallied in City Hall and not at the polling places, the Department of Elections has not set a date for releasing any preliminary results using the ranked-choice voting method.’â€
===end clips
Source: http://www.electology.org/approval-voting-vs-irv
II. Eli – @ #5
“I think the issues surrounding ranked choice voting, or the alternative vote, are a lot more complicated than depicted above and in the linked videos.â€
I concur, big time. Just to get a glimpse, visit Wikipedia’s entry on the subject
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting
=== ===
Note one aspect of this: ‘tactical voting.’ This is about ploys that can be employed to tilt an IRV election to favor a candidate or candidates of your choice. E.g.,
“Tactical voting in IRV seeks to alter the order of eliminations in early rounds, to ensure that the original winner is challenged by a stronger opponent in the final round.†A party, or a group of voters, can plan to vote not straight-forwardly for candidates they sincerely prefer but in combinations aimed to warp the outcome to favor a desire – e.g., to cause a particular candidate to be defeated..
See, e.g., http://wiki.electorama.com/wiki/Instant-runoff_voting#Flaws_of_IRV
The point here is not just that the process can be warped; it is that there are ways savvy participants can construct strategies favoring their cause. The ordinary citizen will not realize that such strategies exist; so won’t be able to take them into account when voting. By the same token, he/she – and friends – will not have information enough to contrive a strategy of this sort to favor their own goals.. So his/her participation is degraded.
I have dug into many reports on IRV, over years, In every case I’ve touched on, the proponents – e.g., in preparing instructions for voters in the run up to an election, – have always omitted discussion of â€tactical voting.†[No wonder; it’s complicated!] E.g.: not long ago the UK considered adopting a system of this sort; their instruction pamphlet for voters had no mention of ‘tactical voting.’ [PS: the citizens voted it down…though for other reasons.]
In short, in a way one could say that this system is elitist.
http://scorevoting.net/CompleteIdioticIRV.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tactical_voting