Voters Gripe About Voting Machine Malfunctions

By Laurie Cherenfant

The phone lines were jammed Tuesday as a voter helpline in Manhattan was flooded with complaints from all five boroughs about broken or stuck levers on the voting machines.

The primary elections featured the old lever-style machines, which date from the 1960s but were replaced in 2012 by optical scanning machines costing nearly $95 million. Since the newer machines posed problems last year, resulting in long lines at the polls, the State Legislature authorized the return of the older machines for the primary and runoff elections, adding that the electronic scanners would be ready for the November general election.

“Lever machines often produce an ‘under vote’ because sometimes the levers are knocked down and knocked back up again,” said Gene Russianoff of the New York Public Interest Research Group, a student-directed research and advocacy organization. “This action causes voters to think they voted when they actually didn’t.”

Emergency paper ballots were on hand at polling sites if problems arose. Indeed. Republican mayoral candidate Joe Lhota had to file a paper ballot as he encountered a broken machine as he voted in Brooklyn. One voting site reported running out of paper ballots and voters were told to come back later.

“These are some of the issues which causes votes to not be recorded, in which case the issue will be called in,” said Tassia Rosa, a BMCC Project Coordinator of NYPIRG.

Some voters also called in to the downtown Manhattan hotline complaining of not being in the registration book at their polling site. Hotline volunteers would then look up the address of the caller and double check to see if the caller was in fact at the correct site.

“This problem is often referred to as ‘right church, wrong pew,’” Russianoff said, referring to votes cast in the correct precinct but the wrong site.

Board of Elections spokeswoman Valerie Vazquez-Rivera conceded that there had been “isolated instances” of malfunctioning machines and that paper ballots were used instead. Although there were various complaints about broken machines, even some of the candidates having some trouble casting their ballot, Vazquez-Rivera said that all the problems were fixed early in the day.

“NYPIRG is the watch-dog of democracy,” Rosa said.  “It’s a big time in NYC—it’s time for a new mayor.