Both chambers of New York’s Legislature have approved a bill that would modernize the way Election Night vote tallies are reported in New York City, allowing for the use of portable memory drives to tally unofficial results instead of a more laborious and lengthy process using paper print outs. The bill now goes to Gov. Andrew Cuomo for his review after the state Senate and Assembly approved it earlier this month. The New York City Board of Elections has come under criticism for years over the slow speed of the process it has used to tabulate votes.
The legislation allows for the memory drives, similar to USB devices, to be transported from the poll sites to where the votes are counted separately from the paper print outs. That means unofficial results would be entered into the system more quickly.
In previous elections, the process worked as follows: Voters filled out ballots by hand, that were then fed into scanning machines. After the polls closed, the scanners printed out paper tapes, like the ones found in grocery stores. The tapes would have the results from particular machines, broken down by different candidates.
Full Article: NY legislature OKs bill to modernize vote tally.