New York: Nassau to probe voting machine failures | Newsday

More than 200 new electronic voting machines in Nassau County jammed on Election Day, forcing voters to cast some 20,000 paper ballots and delaying final tabulations in some close races, election officials said. About 4 percent of the 463,000 Nassau voters who went to the polls Tuesday had to place paper ballots into emergency ballot boxes when the machines malfunctioned, said Democratic Board of Elections Commissioner William Biamonte. In 2010 and 2011, such breakdowns affected less than 1 percent of voters, he said. Similar problems were reported in New York City. Suffolk Republican Deputy Elections Commissioner Bill Ellis said the county experienced only minor issues “that were easily corrected.” Suffolk uses a different vendor than Nassau and the city.

New York: Voters will be allowed to vote in any polling place | Reuters

New York Governor Andrew Cuomo said on Monday New Yorkers affected by superstorm Sandy will be allowed to vote in Tuesday’s U.S. election in any polling place by presenting an affidavit. Cuomo said he was signing an executive order on Monday that will allow voters to cast ballots at voting stations other than the ones to which they are assigned.

New York: Cost of Oneida Co. election ballot spelling error: $75,000 | The Observer-Dispatch

A pallet of about 130,000 printed Oneida County election ballots with the incorrect spelling for the name of the president of the United States is sitting in a print shop in Albany. The cost: about $75,000. The cost to print the corrected ballots: about the same. County Executive Anthony Picente learned of the print job Friday amid a public dispute with the county Board of Elections over an apparent $115,000 budget shortfall in the department.

New York: Digital signatures creating headaches for election officials | democratandchronicle.com

County election officials are running into an unexpected problem with the Department of Motor Vehicles’ new online voter registration system: faulty signatures. Without clear copies of voters’ signatures to compare to poll books, the identities of New Yorkers who registered online might be challenged on Election Day, elections officials said. Digital scans of applicants’ signatures “are not as crisp as we are used to getting, and they could be blurry. They could be distorted,” said Louis Babcock, Rockland County Republican election commissioner. “It could be brought into question by a poll inspector.” Uncertainty over a signature would not keep people from casting a vote, but it might require them to submit an affidavit ballot, which would allow commissioners time to obtain a better copy for verification, he said.

New York: Glitch found in N.Y.’s online voter registration tool | Press & Sun-Bulletin

County election officials are running into an unexpected problem with the Department of Motor Vehicles’ new online voter registration system: faulty signatures. Without clear copies of voters’ signatures to compare to the poll books, the identity of New Yorkers who registered online might be challenged on election day, elections officials said. Digital scans of applicants’ signatures “are not as crisp as we are used to getting, and they could be blurry. They could be distorted,” said Louis Babcock, Rockland County Republican election commissioner. “It could be brought into question by a poll inspector,” he said. Uncertainty over a signature would not keep people from casting a vote, but it might require them to submit an affidavit ballot, which would allow commissioners time to obtain a better copy for verification, Babcock said.

New York: Digital signatures creating headaches for election officials | democratandchronicle.com

County election officials are running into an unexpected problem with the Department of Motor Vehicles’ new online voter registration system: faulty signatures. Without clear copies of voters’ signatures to compare to poll books, the identities of New Yorkers who registered online might be challenged on Election Day, elections officials said. Digital scans of applicants’ signatures “are not as crisp as we are used to getting, and they could be blurry. They could be distorted,” said Louis Babcock, Rockland County Republican election commissioner. “It could be brought into question by a poll inspector.”

New York: Teen admits vandalizing New York City Congressman’s office | WSJ.com

A teenager with a guilty conscience has complicated a New York congressman’s claim that there was a politically motivated break-in at his campaign office. The eighth-grader confessed to a guidance counselor at his school on Tuesday that he and a friend were the ones who smashed windows over the weekend at the Staten Island campaign office of Republican U.S. Rep. Michael Grimm, said New York Police Department spokesman Paul Browne. Police called it a random act of vandalism. They said the teen only became aware his target was Grimm’s office after a wave of news reports about a possible break-in. The boy was expected to be charged with criminal mischief as a juvenile, Browne said.

New York: Staten Island Rep. Grimm calls break-in ‘attack on free elections’ | SILive.com

An overnight intruder smashed several windows and gained entry into Rep. Michael Grimm’s New Dorp headquarters over the weekend, possibly tampering with computers inside the office, authorities said. Grimm’s staff discovered the damage Sunday morning — two large chunks of cement and some smaller rocks had been hurled through three, 4×8-foot vertical windows, according to a campaign spokeswoman. They also believed that someone had deleted computer hard drives. The congressman and his campaign staff believe the vandalism was staged to cover up the computer tampering. On further inspection it was determined the intruder had caused a different type of damage — someone installed the Linux operating system on the office’s computers, Grimm told the Advance Sunday night, and in the process wiped the hard drives clean. “All of my polling data, all of the data from my IDs of voters, and a bunch of other campaign information. But fortunately we had everything backed up from literally hours before, so we don’t lose anything because we have backups,” Grimm said. He has no doubt his office was targeted, and called the incident cowardly.

New York: New York City Voters Annoyed by Hard-to-Read Ballots | NYTimes.com

Some states want their voters to take ID cards to the polls. In New York City, you may want to bring a magnifying glass. Voters who trekked to the polls for Thursday’s primary races were handed ballots with candidates’ names printed in an eye-straining 7-point type, akin to the ingredient list on the side of a cereal box. Now the city Board of Elections is facing outsize criticism over the mite-size font. Civic groups and lawmakers are calling for reform. And some voters are wondering why the instructions on the ballot were displayed in larger and clearer typefaces than the names of the candidates and the offices they were running for. “I just stood and squinted,” recalled Elinore Kaplan, a semiretired teacher in Manhattan, who said she was upset and disappointed to have so much trouble ensuring she voted for the person she wanted to vote for. “It shouldn’t be a challenge,” she said of the ballot’s design. “It should be an invitation.”

New York: Independence Party Decides to Nominate No One for President | Ballot Access News

According to the New York State Board of Elections, the ballot-qualified Independence Party has decided not to nominate any presidential candidate. This is the first time a ballot-qualified party in New York has declined to nominate anyone for President since 1984, when the Right to Life Party had declined to nominate anyone for President. Before that, the last time in New York state was when the Conservative Party nominated no one. However, the only reason the New York Conservative Party ran no one for President in 1968 was that the party wanted to cross-endorse the Republican nominee (Richard Nixon) but the New York Republican Party refused to let the Conservative Party cross-endorse the Republican slate.

New York: New York Voters Crash Online Registration System | GovTech

When New York added the ability for voters to register online earlier this month, officials hoped it would add a lot of citizens to the state’s voter rolls. According to the office of Gov. Andrew Cuomo, fewer than 64 percent of eligible New York residents are currently registered to vote, which ranks the state 47th in the country in voter registration. The addition of the new online registration capability was especially timely, given the Aug. 19 deadline for those wishing to participate in the state’s primary election, scheduled for Sept. 13. “At the DMV, or in their own homes, New Yorkers will now have a convenient and secure way to ensure they are able to register and exercise their right to vote,” said Cuomo in a statement. And New Yorkers seem to have gotten the message. Twitter activity on Friday suggested that an influx of would-be voters brought the new system to its knees.

New York: State now allows online voter registration through DMV | WSJ.com

New York is joining 13 other states that allow voters to register online in an effort to improve voter turnout and save money. The initiative announced Thursday also expands opportunities for voters to register in languages other than English. In addition, voters will be able to update their addresses and party enrollments online. Ten states have had online voting dating back to 2001: Arizona, Colorado, Indiana, Kansas, Louisiana, Maryland, Nevada, Oregon, Utah, and Washington. California, Connecticut and South Caroline have passed laws, but haven’t started online registration yet. Arizona reports more than 70 percent of voter registrations are done online since the state made the move in 2003, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. Arizona’s registrations claimed 9.5 percent from 2002 to 2004, while saving money on staff and paper registrations and increasing accuracy, the national conference said.

New York: NYC Board Of Elections, Meet The 21st Century | New York Daily News

After the hullaballoo over reporting primary-night results in the NY-13 race, the board commissioners voted today to have the flash drives (aka “memory sticks”) that capture results from electronic voting machines transported to police precincts and downloaded directly into BOE laptops. The change will, it’s hoped, avoid the lost in addition/transfer problems that led state Sen. Adriano Espaillat to prematurely concede to incumbent Rep. Charlie Rangel the night of the June 26 Democratic contest. Bronx GOP Commissioner J.C. Polanco, who lobbied heavily for a change from the old cut-and-add system, called it “a good day. “I think New Yorkers are going to appreciate having accurate tallies at the end of the night. I think that working closely with the NYPD, we’ll be able to get it done and make sure that the numbers that are reflected in the unofficial results are close to the results on the scanner,” Polanco, who’s presumably still waiting for that apology from Espaillat, told The Daily Politics. Under the new plan, cops will take the memory sticks back to precincts, where BOE staffers (under bipartisan supervision) will dump the results into the computers. The change will cost about $300,000 in new laptops. “The good thing about this proposal is that it eliminates the potential for human error that is present when we have our co-workers tallying results at the end of the night and doing data entry back at the precincts,” Polanco said. “That’s why I’m excited about it and that’s why I’m happy it passed unanimously.”

New York: Voting machines in the primary between Charlie Rangel and Adriano Espaillat didn’t count hundreds of votes | NY Daily News

More than 500 votes in the controversial Democratic primary contest between Charlie Rangel and Adriano Espaillat were never counted for any of the candidates. A Daily News review of official precinct-by-precint results for the 13th Congressional District shows that electronic vote scanning machines the Board of Elections has used for the past two years failed to record any voter choice on 436 ballots. Those nullified ballots represent 1% of all votes cast in the race — a significant figure, given that Rangel won by only a 2% margin. The Board of Elections discarded another 78 write-in votes as “unattributable” to any candidate, The News’ review found. It defies logic that 514 people went to the polls in this hotly-contested race and voted for no one. The biggest number of both “unrecorded” votes (104) and “unattributable” write-ins (20) came in the 72nd Assembly District in Washington Heights/Inwood, where insurgent candidate Espaillat had the most support.

New York: The cost of democracy? $36.30 per voter in Onondaga County | syracuse.com

New York’s June 26 primary where Republicans chose Manhattan lawyer Wendy Long as their nominee for U.S. Senate just missed setting a record-low for voter turnout in Onondaga County, according to the final unofficial tally. A total of 4,105 people voted out of 85,374 active Republicans enrolled in Onondaga County, according to the Board of Elections. It amounts to a voter turnout of 4.8 percent. That means the record-low of 4.6 percent is safe for now. That record was set it in the 2006 U.S. Senate GOP primary when John Spencer defeated K.T. McFarland for the party’s nomination.

New York: Rep. Rangel voting snafu sees pols unite for change | NY Daily News

Alarmed by the shifting vote tallies that have turned Charlie Rangel’s apparent reelection into a court battle, legislative leaders say they want to fix the way city votes are counted. The operation needs to be totally computerized, rather than having a bungle-prone process that requires the city Board of Elections to count paper ballots by hand, said Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver (D-Manhattan). “That should definitely be something they do — just collect all the flash drives (from the voting machines) and bring them to [BOE] headquarters,” Silver said. “I don’t think you’ll change the outcomes as a result, but you’ll certainly know the results faster.”

New York: Troubling actions by New York City Board of Elections members | NY Daily News

Vote counting in the fierce congressional battle between incumbent Charlie Rangel and his insurgent challenger Adriano Espaillat is no longer a matter of the usual incompetence of the Board of Elections. Troubling signs have now emerged that some officials at the board crossed the line in an all-out effort by the Democratic Party establishment to ensure a Rangel victory, and that the board’s staff wrongly disqualified hundreds of paper ballots. Board officials began their tally Thursday of some 2,600 paper ballots. Those are either mail-in absentee votes or “affidavit” ballots from people who went to the polls last week but were told their name was not on the rolls. That count showed Rangel increasing his slim 807-vote overall lead by another 131 votes, although Espaillat’s main base area of Washington Heights and Inwood has yet to be counted. But until now, no one has mentioned more than 2,000 additional paper votes the board’s staff tossed out this week as invalid.

New York: Rangel Primary Lead Grows During First Day Of Paper Ballot Count | NY1.com

Voters in the 13th congressional district went to the polls in Manhattan and the Bronx more than a week ago, but votes in the Democratic primary race for Congressman Charles Rangel’s seat were still being counted Thursday. New numbers showed Rangel’s margin growing to a lead of 945 votes over his chief rival, state Senator Adriano Espaillat. “It seems that both sides are cooperating with each other and with the board and we are making good progress,” said Board of Elections counsel Steven Richman. It could take a couple of days to count all of the more than 2,000 absentee and affidavit ballots in the race. BOE officials began opening them in Greenwich Village on Thursday morning.

New York: Rangel opponent files for re-vote in increasingly tight primary | The Washington Post

What at one point looked like a big primary night victory for Rep. Charlie Rangel (D-N.Y.) has gradually become a close race — enough so that Rangel’s opponent is now filing for a possible do-over election. State Sen. Adriano Espaillat this week filed with the state Supreme Court seeking either a recount or a highly unusual redo of his June 26 primary with Rangel. Espaillat has lodged accusations of voter suppression and has pointed to faulty administration and vote-counting by New York City elections officials. Rep. Charles Rangel, D-N.Y., salutes surviving members of the Montford Point Marines, during a Congressional Gold Medal ceremony at the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Wednesday, June 27, 2012. (Pablo Martinez Monsivais — Associated Press) The race appeared over and done last Tuesday night, with Rangel holding a double-digit lead in early returns. He delivered a victory speech, and Espaillat conceded. As the night wore on, though, Espaillat closed the gap significantly, and a continuing manual counting of the ballots now has Rangel up just 802 votes out of nearly 40,000 cast. A couple thousand absentee ballots still have yet to be counted.

New York: Inside a Possible Rangel-Espaillat Rematch | WSJ

While contesting Rep. Charles Rangel’s primary congressional victory, lawyers for Sen. Adriano Espaillat raised eyebrows Monday by floating the possibility of a redo election. At the moment, with a couple of thousands ballots left to be counted, Espaillat’s camp is holding its powder.  But if Rangel’s lead — now standing at 802 votes — keeps shrinking, Espaillat could ask the courts to order a new vote. The campaign said it filed a petition asking for a re-vote Tuesday, but only to keep its options open in case it finds irregularities, since there’s a 10-day statute of limitations on such claims. Such a redo scenario would be highly unusual in New York. But it’s not unheard of in disputed primary races. “It’s granted in extraordinarily rare situations,” said Jerry Goldfeder, a veteran Democratic election attorney. A razor-thin margin, alone, isn’t enough to warrant a do-over. Under state election law: “The court may direct reassembling of any convention or the holding of a new primary election, or caucus where it finds there has been such fraud or irregularity as to render impossible a determination as to who rightfully was nominated or elected.”

New York: Latino Groups Call for Probe of Rangel Race | Fox News

A national Hispanic civil rights group is asking the Department of Justice to investigate alleged voter suppression in the Democratic primary in the 13th congressional district. The group, LatinoJustice PRLDEF, has sent a letter to the DOJ voicing concern that Spanish-speaking voters found it difficult to cast ballots because they were unable to receive Spanish-language assistance and were turned away, or were told to vote by affidavit ballots, according to a statement by the organization. The appeal to the DOJ by LatinoJustice, which recently was among several voter advocacy groups that sued Florida over its decision to target more than 2,600 registered voters whose citizenship was questionable, comes as veteran U.S. Rep. Charles Rangel has seen his lead over the runner-up dwindle to slightly more than 800 votes. Some 2,000 absentee and affidavit ballots remain to be counted; the result is expected to be announced Thursday.

New York: Court Hears Charlie Rangel Ballot Challenge | Roll Call

There’s a bit of a worm in the apparent Big Apple primary victory of storied Rep. Charlie Rangel (D). Rangel originally appeared to have beaten his top competitor, state Sen. Adriano Espaillat, by a wide margin. The New York City Board of Elections now says that with normal ballots counted, Rangel is up by only 802 votes, or about 2 percent of votes cast. But with more than 2,000 other paper ballots, such as provisional and absentee (from city voters as well as military service members overseas), as yet uncounted, his margin could shrink. The results are still unofficial and there is a possibility, if very slight, that Rangel didn’t actually win the election. Or, at least, that there could be a recount.

New York: Rangel’s Rivals Make Allegations Of Voter Fraud And Uncounted Ballots | Politicker

Supporters of State Senator Adriano Espaillat are calling for a federal monitor to step in and oversee the counting of votes in his congressional race against longtime Congressman Charlie Rangel after reports of uncounted votes emerged yesterday. Mr. Rangel was initially declared the victor by the Associated Press and in unofficial totals from the Board of Elections after the election on Tuesday, but the AP subsequently published a report claiming results from 33 of the 506 precincts in the Upper Manhattan district remained uncounted. Mr. Espaillat’s supporters announced their push for a federal monitor at a press conference in front of Mr. Rangel’s office in Harlem where some of the attendees also made allegations of voter fraud at the polls Tuesday. “I’m here today to call for a federal monitor on the Board of Elections. It is unacceptable that 48 hours after the elections took place….we don’t have the outcome of this election,” said Councilman Ydanis Rodriguez, a close ally of Mr. Espaillat’s. “We also have a lot of concerns that still the Board of Elections has not received [results from] a number of election districts. We don’t know where they are, they don’t know where they are.” Though Mr. Rodriguez did not provide specific numbers or locations of the precincts where votes remain uncounted, he said most of these precincts are in areas favorable to Mr. Espaillat inside his State Senate district.

New York: New York City Elections to Cost $80 Million | Epoch Times

Despite proposed budget cuts for sensitive programs such as day care centers and education, it is estimated the city will spend a total of $80 million for the four citywide elections in 2012, according to the Independent Budget Office (IBO). Each of the four elections may cost as much as $23 million, IBO states. The Republican presidential primary held in April, the first of the four elections had a small turnout. Only 5 percent of eligible voters cast ballots; the cost per vote was around $522. The price wouldn’t be as expensive if it weren’t for tight scheduling. There are usually three citywide elections per year, but a federal judge ruled that the congressional primaries in September are too close to the general election in November. Military personnel overseas would not have enough time to receive absentee ballots before the general election. Thus, a whole extra day of voting had to be added.

New York: Proposed election law could simplify voter registration | Queens Chronicle

State Sen. Mike Gianaris (D-Astoria), Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh (D-Manhattan) and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law introduced the Voter Empowerment Act of New York bill on June 7. The bill will automatically register eligible consenting citizens at designated government agencies; permit pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds; automatically transfer registrations of New Yorkers who move within the state; provide access to voter registration records and registration of eligible citizens online and allow people to register or change their party later in the election cycle.

New York: New York Voter Empowerment Act Introduced | Queens Gazette

State Senator Michael Gianaris, Assemblymember Brian Kavanagh and the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law joined with good government and advocacy groups on June 7 to announce the introduction of the Voter Empowerment Act of New York, a nonpartisan initiative to increase voter participation as the 2012 election season commences. This legislation would amend the election law to update, streamline and make more efficient the voter registration process in New York. Currently, the single biggest barrier to voting is our antiquated registration system. The proposed bill would improve New York’s voter participation by automatically registering citizens to vote with their consent and updating their registration information when they interact with specific government agencies. It would also computerize the entire registration process, reducing typographical and clerical errors that come with hand-written registration documents and making it easier for eligible voters to register.

New York: Deal Near for Simplified Ballots | NYTimes.com

Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo and lawmakers on Tuesday were nearing an agreement to simplify the much-criticized ballots used in the state’s elections. The new ballot would contain shorter instructions, without legal jargon, and would emphasize the names of candidates in clear, bold type. The proposed design, which was described by an official with direct knowledge of it, would also forbid more than two languages to be used on a ballot, allowing for larger and more legible text.

New York: Risks of the digital dotted line | Times Union

A state plan to allow motorists to register to vote electronically at the DMV — and eventually online — has triggered sharp push-back from local elections officials who fear it will make it harder to detect voter fraud. But Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s administration says those fears, which center largely on the use of digital signatures, are based on a fundamentally flawed understanding of how the process would work at state Department of Motor Vehicle sites. State and good-government groups contend the changes streamline the registration process and have been proved elsewhere as cheaper, more user-friendly and accurate. Despite the claims, elections officials in Albany County, which is to be a pilot site for the program expected to fully roll out next year, say they won’t accept the electronic registrations — even as the Cuomo administration argues that state law gives them no choice.

New York: Problems with voting machine ruled Cattaraugus-Little Valley proposition invalid | The Salamanca Press

A problem with a voting machine, most likely human error, has caused a proposition at the Cattaraugus-Little Valley Central School District to be ruled invalid. The vote on Proposition No. 2, which asked voters to cast a ballot for the purchase of additional school buses, had been declared “passed” unofficially by the school district on May 15, the night of the votes. However, official results were not released for two days because school officials spotted an error. As previously reported, school officials ruled the proposition invalid when the official results were announced. “The night of the vote, when we tabulated everything, there were actually more votes cast for that proposition than there were voters who went in the door, signed the book and went into the machines,” said district superintendent Jon Peterson. “So we knew there was some error in the numbers.”

New York: Hamburg Voting Machine Malfunction Problem Solved | wgrz.com

Voters in Hamburg Central School will soon know their school budget vote results now that the problem with a malfunctioning ballot machine has been solved. Erie County Board of Elections Michael Agostino told 2 On Your Side a malfunctioning USB stick drive could not read the final results Tuesday night. The machine was sealed and taken away. Agostino said voting officials took all the paper ballots inserted into the machine Wednesday morning, and re-inserted them into a different machine and used a new stick drive to tally up the results. He went on to say sometimes technology will work well one minute and fail the next.