Caution needed on new voting machines in Suffolk

Last week, the Suffolk County Legislature voted, 13-1, to allocate nearly $35 million for the purchase of new voting machines. A touch-screen device different from the accustomed paper-marking method is being tested through Tuesday in a special election for a Southampton Town council seat.

As Newsday reported, Betty Manzella, the Republican member on the county Board of Elections, has said the purchase is necessary to replace "14-year-old tabulators that are beyond their useful life of 8 to 12 years." But a nagging question persists: Could it be better and cheaper and more practical to just replace the equipment used in the current ballot-marking system rather than buy touch screens?

"The cost is just a really big number," Legis. Steve Englebright, the "no" vote, told a Newsday reporter. "And we become dependent upon the vendor, the manufacturer, in every way."

Touch-screen voting has been a controversial topic in New York for many years. After a long nationwide process of upgrading voting technology, following the flawed presidential vote in 2000 in Florida, this state’s election officials agreed that marked paper ballots offered the most solid assurance of accuracy and ability to audit results.

To be sure, systems such as the ExpressVote XL model by Election Systems and Software, now being tested, do use printed ballots. But rather than the voter filling it in with a pen, and reading it over, and walking over to place the ballot in a tabulator, it’s all more automated. You put the ballot in the machine, a screen pops up with your options, and you tap on your choices. Next a printout that looks like a receipt appears through a window. Once approved, the ballot goes automatically to a secured box for scanning and counting.

"Your choice is recorded as a bar code that you yourself can’t read," said Susan Lerner, executive director of Common Cause New York, a critic of ExpressVote XL. The bar code is read automatically in the board’s counting process, a process that is more opaque.

The state Board of Elections in late 2023 authorized local boards to purchase touch screens. Lobbyists with Democratic ties pushed for a change to touch screens. ES&S assured Suffolk officials that "audits have shown the ExpressVote XL to be 100% accurate in post-election audits" and that it could be a less expensive option in the long run. Still, an easily verifiable paper trail must be a concern.

Suffolk County is not renowned for its competence in selecting and handling technology. Not only did a major ransomware attack cripple the county’s operating systems in recent years, for example, an odd technological hiccup also later occurred in identifying those who paid traffic-ticket fees that were subsequently voided.

We hope election boards get this right and convince the public beyond small pilot tests that this new expense is worth it. Past county problems suggest that changing voting technologies may be a solution in search of a problem.