New York - New York State Senator Liz Krueger Monday called on county election commissioners from across the state to protect every New York voter's right to an accurate, tamper proof and traceable ballot. County Board of Elections have just a few weeks left to choose between five potential voting systems with ballot marking equipment to assist voters with disabilities: two direct recording electronic (DRE) voting machines and three paper based optical scanning (PBOS) systems. 

"Optical scanning technology has proven far more reliable than computer voting machines, and preserves the actual paper ballot as the voting record to ensure accuracy. In choosing new machines county boards should choose only from the three PBOS options," said Krueger.

The choice is being forced on commissioners by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) that has caused countless voting problems in states that rushed to implement the federal law.

Voting rights advocates have found that three main concerns come from the use of touch-screen systems DRE electronic voting machines:

            1.) hardware/software reliability;

            2.) verifiability;

            3.) security.

"New York has been out of compliance with HAVA for good reason: the current lever voting machines—despite their flaws—are far more reliable than the DRE voting machines that have given every other state headaches," Krueger said. "The federal government has set an arbitrary deadline for states, without first ensuring that the machines states choose from are tamper proof and have a verifiable paper trail. Florida, Ohio, Maryland, New Jersey and Georgia are only some of the states that rushed to compliance and are now finding that they have wasted money and placed the voters' right to an election at risk—completely undermining the intention of HAVA."