New York

New York: Amid turmoil at U.S. Attorney’s Office, federal probe of Ulster County Board of Elections ‘still ongoing’ | Paul Kirby/Daily Freeman

A federal unspecified probe into the Ulster County Board of Elections is apparently ongoing despite upheaval in the U.S. Attorney’s Office that is conducting it. Deputy County Executive Amberly Jane Campbell said Thursday that the investigation is “still ongoing (but) we can’t provide any other update right now.” Deputy County Executive James Amenta confirmed last week that in the last month, the U.S. Attorney’s Office Northern District of New York requested documentation from the Ulster County Board of Elections, although Amenta declined to say what documents the federal government requested. On Wednesday, federal judges appointed Donald T. Kinsella as U.S. Attorney for the Northern District, but U.S. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, in a social media post, fired Kinsella. That apparently left John A. Sarcone III in charge even after a federal judge last month concluded he was serving as U.S. attorney unlawfully. Read Article

New York: Voting machines said Stephentown rejected the proposed library budget. A recount said otherwise. | Tyler A. McNeil/Albany Times-Union

Unofficial results after Election Day a month ago showed that Stephentown Memorial Library’s budget proposal was shot down by 89% of voters, or 528-60. As it turns out, that count was wildly inaccurate. Certified election results submitted by the Rensselaer County Board of Elections following a recount show that the library’s proposal — to increase municipal tax contributions from $95,000 to $110,000 — actually passed easily by a vote of 540 to 279. Those results were filed Monday with the state Board of Elections. The certification marks the end of a shocking chapter for the rural library located less than 3 miles from the Massachusetts border. The initial results had been met with disbelief among library stakeholders. Read Article

New York: Formatting errors lead to recount of all Rensselaer County ballots | Tyler A. McNeil/Albany Times-Union

All ballots will be recounted in Rensselaer County after formatting errors were discovered during the recanvassing process. Every contest in the county will be retabulated. Ovals juxtaposed over text on the second side of the ballot may have also generated incorrect results for propositions in some municipalities, according to the Rensselaer County Board of Elections. The full extent of the issue is not yet clear. With the expansive rehashing of about 40,000 ballots underway, the BOE’s Republican Commissioner Henry F. Zwack expects that it could take until the first week of December to get sorted out. Read Article

New York: What the election case in Rockland County tells us about the tide of voter mistrust | Jessica Huseman/ Votebeat

Donald Trump is leaving little doubt about who’s president right now, but in one corner of the country, a lawsuit is helping to fan skepticism about the results of the 2024 general election. The case against Rockland County, New York, claims that there were irregularities in the county’s vote tallies, judging in part by what the plaintiffs characterize as statistical anomalies — notably the mismatch in support between Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand and the person at the top of the party’s ticket, Vice President Kamala Harris. Gillibrand won the suburban county by about 8,000 votes, while Harris lost to Trump by more than 17,000. The plaintiffs say it’s a suspicious pattern of ticket-splitting that suggests vote-rigging or errors, an echo of the spurious claims made by Trump allies when he lost several swing states in 2020. They want the court to invalidate the Senate and presidential election results and order the county to redo the election. Read Article

Controversial ExpressVote XL voting machine gaining use in New York elections | Emilie Munson/The Albany Times-Union

Last week, roughly 32,000 people cast their ballots in school board elections in Monroe County using a voting machine that’s been a source of controversy in New York for years. It was the largest number of votes cast on an ExpressVote XL machine in New York to date. And in Monroe and other counties, the device is gaining a foothold in the state, even as a movement to stop its use is brewing. The ExpressVote XL is the subject of an ongoing lawsuit seeking to block its use in New York. A group of Democrats in the Legislature are also trying to pass a bill to prevent the devices from being used in elections. An executive order by President Donald J. Trump opposing voting systems like the ExpressVote XL also looms. Read Article

New York: Blockchain for election integrity bill resurfaces | Colin Wood/StateScoop

For the fifth straight legislative term in New York, state assembly member Clyde Vanel has introduced a bill that would order the state to study whether using distributed ledger technology, better known as blockchain, could “protect” voter records and election results. Identical bills introduced in sessions dating back to 2017 haven’t found traction. Mark Lindeman, policy and strategy director with the nonprofit Verified Voting, said he was unsure what problem related to elections that blockchain, a technology made famous for underpinning cryptocurrencies like bitcoin, could solve. “For the vast majority of us, who do not live in the world of bitcoin and really don’t want to, it’s really hard for me to imagine a situation in which I could feel better about election results knowing that they’re on a distributed ledger somewhere,” Lindeman said. Read Article

New York’s Voting Rights Act has survived a constitutional challenge | Dan Clark/Albany Times Union

The New York Voting Rights Act, which sets guardrails for localities to follow in administering fair elections, was upheld as constitutional Thursday after a state appellate court reversed a decision that struck it down last year. The case was filed by residents of the town of Newburgh who claimed its at-large election system diluted the vote of racial minorities in violation of the state law. Read Article

New York’s early mail-in voting law upheld by top court | Dan Clark/Times-Union

New York’s highest court upheld a law Tuesday that allows ballots to be mailed in during the early voting period ahead of an election, soundly rejecting arguments from Republicans that the statute violates the state constitution.The ruling means the mail-in voting option will be allowed in this November’s election and future elections in New York unless the law faces another legal challenge. “While some want to put up roadblocks and stifle New Yorkers’ ability to exercise their constitutional right to vote, I will always stand up and protect this basic, yet essential, freedom,” said state Attorney General Letitia James, whose office defended the state in the case. Read Article

New York: Push grows to mandate paper ballots as counties eye touch-screen voting |  Kate Lisa/Spectrum News

Election policy advocates and good-government groups want the Legislature to change state law to mandate paper ballots be made available to New York voters as more counties plan to transition to touch-screen voting machines the state Board of Elections certified last year. After nearly 14 years, New York’s voting machines need an update — and it’s raising questions about how a possible switch to all touch-screen voting in New York elections will impact election security after news reports both Nassau and Suffolk counties on Long Island will spend millions of dollars to purchase the touch-screen ballot devices next year. As the technology emerges across several U.S. states, advocates say New York lawmakers must take action to protect voters’ ability to have a choice in how they cast their ballot. Read Article

New York Court Dismisses ExpressVote XLChallenge | Madeleine Greenberg/Democracy Docket

A New York court has dismissed a lawsuit challenging the approval of the ExpressVote XL touch screen voting machine by the New York State Board of Elections. The lawsuit, filed by Common Cause New York, the Black Institute, and five New York voters in November 2023, alleged that the approval violated state law. The plaintiffs argued that the machine’s barcode system prevented voters from verifying their selections, potentially fueling election fraud conspiracy theories. However, the court ruled that the plaintiffs failed to demonstrate how they would be harmed by the approval of the machines, leading to the dismissal of the case. Read Article

New York Democrats remove state’s top elections official | Bill Mahoney/Politico

Douglas Kellner, a long-serving advocate for election integrity and transparency in New York, was been ousted as co-chair of the state Board of Elections. Kellner, who oversaw transformative changes in New York’s elections during his 18 year tenure, had been critical of the ES&S ExpressVote XL, which was certified by the .board earlier this year. The move to replace him with Henry Berger comes as the board gears up for a significant role in launching a public campaign financing system next year. Critics argue that the change is untimely, particularly in the run-up to the crucial 2024 vote. Read Article

New York: Election integrity advocates sue to stop use of ExpressVote XL | Rebecca C. Lewis/City & State New York

Common Cause New York and The Black Institute, along with five individuals, have filed a lawsuit against the state Board of Elections to prevent the use of the ExpressVote XL voting machines in the 2024 elections. The lawsuit claims that the touch screen machines do not allow voters to independently and privately verify their votes, as required by state law. Despite approval from the state Board of Elections, no local Board of Elections has purchased the machines. The lawsuit aims to block localities from buying and using these machines, emphasizing that paper ballots marked by the voter are the preferred election security standard. Critics argue that the ExpressVote XL lacks transparency and fails to meet legal standards, exacerbating distrust in the electoral process. Read Article

New York Board of Elections warns of impersonators coming to homes | Justin Velasquez/Spectrum News

Republican commissioner Michele Sardo and Democratic commissioner Dustin Czarny of the Onondaga County Board of Elections are united against individuals impersonating their office staff and questioning voters about their registrations, considering it a vile act of fraud. They clarified that such impersonators are likely misunderstanding voter-registration rules, as voter registrations can lapse when people move but aren’t automatically illegal as long as voters aren’t registered in two different counties. The Board of Elections aims to ensure secure and accurate elections and underlined that they never send staff to people’s homes. An investigation is underway, and the New York State Board of Elections urged citizens to report such incidents to local law enforcement. Read Article

New York group discourages counties from buying touch screen voting machine ExpressVote XL | Luke Parsnow/Spectrum News

Common Cause NY, a good-government group, is discouraging New York counties from adopting the newly certified ExpressVote XL touch screen voting machine, which enables electronic ballot marking instead of traditional paper ballots. Several county elections commissioners, including those from New York City, Ulster, Onondaga, and Chautauqua, have expressed disinterest in purchasing these machines. The group emphasizes the security of paper ballots marked by voters, considering touch-screen technology less secure and highlighting that some states that had adopted touch-screen systems have reverted to paper ballots. The group also raises concerns about the use of Windows 10 in the ExpressVote XL, as Microsoft plans to end software updates for this operating system in two years. Read Article

New York State Board of Elections votes to certify controversial touch-screen voting machines | Karen DeWitt/WXXI

The New York State Board of Elections has certified the ExpressVote XL for use in future elections. The decision was met with opposition from government reform groups who raised concerns about the machine’s lack of a verified paper trail and potential vulnerability to cyberattacks. The machine prints a ballot on thermal paper, which the voter can view but not handle, and converts it into a barcode for recording the results. Currently, all voting machines in New York use paper ballots filled out by hand and fed into tallying machines. The certification has sparked debate and criticism from some commissioners and reform groups who argue that the existing hand-marked paper ballots are more secure and reliable. Read Article

New York State Board of Elections certifies controversial ES&S ExpressVoteXL voting machines | Joshua Solomon/Albany Times-Union

The New York State Board of Elections voted 3-1 to allow counties to purchase a digital voting machine called the ExpressVote XL, which has been a subject of concern for voting rights groups and good government advocates. The decision comes after more than five hours of debate, during which the commissioners discussed potential security issues with the machine’s software and the need for hand audits. While some commissioners expressed concerns about the machine’s security and transparency, others supported it as a way to improve the voting experience for people with disabilities and non-English speakers. The use of digital voting machines has been a controversial topic, with former President Donald Trump raising concerns about potential fraud with voting machines in the 2020 election. Read Article

New York: Critics unhappy with Board of Elections certification of ES&S ExpressVoteXL | Susan Arbetter/Spectrum News

The New York State Board of Elections has voted to certify the ExpressVote XL Universal Voting System, a touch-screen voting machine that displays the entire ballot on a 32-inch screen. The system aims to eliminate the need for interpretation of a voter’s intent, which has been an issue in the state. However, the new technology has faced criticism from cybersecurity election experts and good-government groups like Common Cause, who prefer voter-marked paper ballots read by scanners. Concerns include the system’s cost, potential security vulnerabilities with Windows 10 (which it uses), and the lack of direct control for voters to verify their selections. The certification comes with two amendments, one addressing ongoing improvement and testing issues and the other requiring hand audits of all ExpressVote XL summary cards. Read Article

New York Board of Elections expected to vote on the use of highly controversial ExpressVoteXL voting machines | Rebecca C. Lewis and Shantel Destra/City & State New York

Ahead of the Board of Elections vote on authorizing the use of controversial touch-screen voting machines called ExpressVoteXL, various groups, including good government organizations, election advocates, and security experts, are urging commissioners not to approve them. The opposition stems from concerns about cyber vulnerabilities, the encoding of voter selections into barcodes and the high cost without proven benefits. Experts have questioned the sufficiency of thermal paper used by the machines and raised technical arguments against them. Some groups have shared letters and evidence to support their concerns, while others argue that paper ballots marked by voters are the gold standard for election security. The opposition to the machines is not new, with previous efforts to ban them through legislation failing. Read Article

New York: Watchdog Groups Criticize ‘Cyber Voting’ Plan | Christian Wade/Post Journal

A New York proposal to allow some voters to return ballots over the Internet has been criticized by government watchdogs, who say it would jeopardize cybersecurity and erode confidence in the state’s election system. The proposal, filed by a group of Democratic lawmakers, would allow New Yorkers who are members of the military serving overseas and people with disabilities to submit ballots for federal, state and local elections using “electronic absentee ballots” submitted by email. However, government watchdog groups say there is “broad consensus” that electronic ballot return presents “severe security risks” to the integrity of elections. They point to a recent review by several federal agencies, including the FBI, which found the risk is too high even with security safeguards and other precautions for electronic ballot returning systems. The agencies warn that electronic ballot return “faces significant security risks to the confidentiality, integrity, and availability of voted ballots,” ultimately affecting the tabulation and results of elections. Read Article

New York: Election Day vote centers proposed | John Whittaker/Observer Today

A new proposal in the state Senate would allow counties to establish countywide polling places for primary or general elections. S.5537 is sponsored by Sen. Rachel May, D-Syracuse, said the idea behind creating early voting sites should be extended to Election Day. “Given the success of this model during the early voting period, it is time for New York to take another step that has proven highly effective in numerous other states: establishing Election Day vote centers,” May said. Countywide vote centers have been used in Wyoming, South Dakota, Iowa, Utah, Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, Arkansas, North Dakota and Indiana. Voters coming to vote are checked against an electronic poll book kept at the site. The first vote centers were created in Colorado in 2003. As more states have been added, vote centers have been said to reduce votes rejected for being in the wrong voting district, makes voting easier and more efficient, can save money by having fewer poll workers and boost turnout.

Full Article: Election Day vote centers proposed | News, Sports, Jobs – Observer Today

New York: Oops. Green ink. Stray marks. Inside the largest hand recount in Onondaga County history / Chris Carlson/syracuse.com

The largest hand recount in the history of Onondaga County elections began on Tuesday in an atmosphere resembling a standardized test. Officials, volunteers and lawyers began the painstaking process of counting more than 93,000 ballots by hand in a non-descript room in the Onondaga County Board of Elections. Over the next week, they will spend nearly eight hours a day counting the votes that will eventually determine whether Democrat John Mannion or Republican Rebecca Shiroff becomes the senator representing New York’s 50th District. With Mannion, the incumbent, leading by just 51 votes, the race is so close that it triggered a state law requiring a hand count of each ballot. The scene that played out in Onondaga County Tuesday is expected to be repeated each work day until the results are known sometime next week.

Full Article: Oops. Green ink. Stray marks. Inside the largest hand recount in Onondaga County history – syracuse.com

New York: Officials say Suffolk County cyberattack won’t have impact on upcoming election | Tim Gannon/The Suffolk Times

Suffolk County’s elections will not be impacted by the Sept. 8 cyberattack that has shut down many county functions, officials said. However, the way the county reports election results will be different. “At this point, everything is as it was,” said Board of Elections deputy commissioner Gail Lolis. “And in terms of operating the election, there’s absolutely no impact whatsoever. The only potential impact may be how we post results on our webpage on election night.” The county Board of Elections traditionally posts up-to-the minute elections results that are hosted by the county’s website. But that site may not be up and running by Election Day, Tuesday, Nov. 8. The BOE is now working on an alternate plan, whereby New York State will provide web space for the county’s election results. The county BOE’s own site, suffolkvotes.com, also remained down as of early this week. County Executive Steve Bellone states on the county’s current one-page website that officials believe the Sept. 8 hackers accessed and/or acquired certain personal information from one or more county agency servers. The county has since hired multiple cybersecurity firms to conduct an examination to protect employees and residents as well as restore online services, according to Mr. Bellone.

Full Article: Officials say county cyberattack won’t have impact on upcoming election – The Suffolk Times

New York: Lobbyists killed a bill to protect elections with an assist from the NAACP | Sam Mellins/Albany Times Union

New York’s elections could soon be at risk of getting hacked. That’s because the state Board of Elections may soon approve certain voting machines that experts say are particularly vulnerable to cyberattacks. A bill that would have banned those machines passed the state Senate last month, but it died in the state Assembly after the elections committee chair refused to let it come to a vote. After passing the Senate on May 31, the bill, sponsored by state Sen. Zellnor Myrie, D-Brooklyn, and Assemblywoman Amy Paulin, D-Westchester, seemed like a solid bet for passage in the Assembly, since it was sponsored by nearly half of the Assembly’s Democrats, as well as several Republicans. But it never got a vote. It was blocked by a team of opponents, including Assemblywoman Latrice Walker, D-Brooklyn, who chairs the chamber’s Election Law Committee, lobbyists for the voting machine company Election Systems & Software, and—perhaps unexpectedly—the New York State chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, or NAACP, which used language taken directly from a lobbyist’s memo to successfully pressure key lawmakers to kill it. … Election Systems & Software, the voting machine company that lobbied against the bill, is currently seeking state approval for the ExpressVote XL, a ballot-marking machine it manufactures. The machine encodes voters’ choices in barcodes, rather than the traditional filled-in bubbles next to the candidates’ names. Since humans can’t read barcodes, it’s impossible for voters to check whether their selections have been correctly recorded once the machine prints their ballot. The voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems is also seeking state approval for the ImageCast X voting machine, which functions very similarly to the ExpressVote XL.

Full Article: Lobbyists killed a bill to protect elections with an assist from the NAACP

New York: ES&S Uses Undergraduate Project to Lobby Legislature on Risky Voting Machines | Andrew Appel/Freedom to Tinker

Full Article: ES&S Uses Undergraduate Project to Lobby New York Legislature on Risky Voting Machines

New York Agrees to Expand Voting Access for People With Disabilities | Ashley Wong/The New York Times

Full Article: New York Agrees to Expand Voting Access for People With Disabilities – The New York Times

New York: ‘O’ my! Filling in candidate’s middle initial changes outcome in Lewiston race | Thomas J. Prohaska/The Buffalo News

Full Article: ‘O’ my! Filling in candidate’s middle initial changes outcome in Lewiston race | Buffalo Politics News | buffalonews.com

New York Senate Plans Statewide Hearings On Elections With Voters Taking Center Stage | Brigid Bergin/WNYC

After a tumultuous primary election season in New York City that is renewing perennial calls to overhaul how the state runs its elections, the head of the New York State Senate Elections Committee, State Senator Zellnor Myrie of Brooklyn, announced plans on Monday to hold a series of hearings across the state to gather input from voters about their experiences at the polls. “We’re going to go out to Syracuse and Rochester. We’re going to hear from Westchester, Hudson Valley, and Long Island voters about what they think should be changed,” said Myrie during an appearance on The Brian Lehrer Show. “So it won’t just be a panel of experts and folks who work in this space regularly. We’re going to hear from the voters,” he added. The announcement made good on a commitment from Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart Cousins who described the recent errors on the part of the New York City Board of Elections when they released and then retracted faulty ranked-choice voting tallies as a “national embarrassment” and pledged to hold legislative hearings this summer to develop reform proposals. The first State Senate hearing is expected to take place at Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn on July 28th with additional hearings scheduled for other localities in the final week of July and first week in August. Myrie said the process will culminate in Albany in September at a hearing that will also feature testimony from experts in election administration and good government. These State Senate hearings come in addition to one previously announced by the Assemblymember Latrice Walker, who chairs that chamber’s Election Law Committee, specifically on the topic of ranked-choice voting. That hearing is scheduled for Monday, July 19th at 250 Broadway in Manhattan.

Full Article: NY Senate Plans Statewide Hearings On Elections With Voters Taking Center Stage – Gothamist

Why New York’s Election Debacle Is Likely to Fuel Conspiracy Theories | Maggie Astor/The New York Times

It has been one week since the New York City Board of Elections botched the release of preliminary ranked-choice tabulations from the city’s mayoral race, counting 135,000 dummy ballots that employees had used to test a computer system and then failed to delete. It was a stunning display of carelessness even from an agency long known for its dysfunction, and the reverberations will continue long after Tuesday evening, when Eric Adams was declared the winner of the Democratic primary race by The Associated Press. (You can follow the latest news here.) That’s because, while the mistake was discovered within hours and corrected by the next day, it provided purveyors of right-wing disinformation with ammunition as powerful as anything they could have invented. Some supporters of former President Donald J. Trump quickly suggested that the results of the 2020 election might also have been miscounted. (Exhaustive investigations have made it very clear that they weren’t.) Senator Tom Cotton, Republican of Arkansas, called ranked-choice voting “a corrupt scam” — even though problems at the Board of Elections far predate it — and tweeted: “How can anyone trust that a voter’s fourth-place choice was accurately tabulated on the eighth round of ranking? Look at the debacle in New York City right now.” Mr. Trump himself suggested falsely that the true results would never be known. “We had an election where we did much better than we did the first time, and amazingly, we lost,” Mr. Trump said at an event in Texas on Wednesday. “Check out the New York election today, by the way. They just realized it’s a disaster. They’re unable to count the votes. Did you see it? It just came out. They’re missing 135,000 votes. They put 135,000 make-believe votes in. Our elections are a disaster.”

Full Article: Why New York’s Election Debacle Is Likely to Fuel Conspiracy Theories – The New York Times