NY elections board tentatively approves controversial touch-screen voting machine

 ALBANY — The state Board of Elections tentatively approved certifying a controversial touch-screen voting machine, knocking down concerns from a Democratic commissioner and watchdog groups about coding and security issues.

The board — consisting of two Democrats and two Republicans — voted 3-1 to allow the use of  “ExpressVote XL,” a touch-screen machine offered by Nebraska-based Election Systems & Software, while stipulating the company address software coding issues and submit an update.

The vote was a defeat for good-government groups, which said the touch-screen system has had problems in other states and contended there is no reason for the state to potentially switch from the simple, hand-marked paper ballots used by almost all New Yorkers in recent elections.

Importantly, if the machine gains full approval, it’s use isn’t mandatory — it means it’s just one purchase option for counties. Per state law, counties make individual decisions on voting machines.

If used locally, voters would touch a computer screen to cast a ballot, as opposed to marking a paper ballot, as about 99% of New York voters do now.

Doug Kellner, a Democratic board member, opposed certification of ExpressVote, noting a cyber consultant found numerous coding issues with the machine’s software.

Those could be fixed but the bigger issues, Kellner said, include that the machine doesn’t produce a secure paper trail for a voter to review and verify his or her vote.

Instead, it encodes a voter’s selections in computer bar codes and produces a “summary card” showing the voter’s recorded selections. A voter can check the summary card and notify a poll worker if there is a discrepancy.

Further, the touch-screen machines are much more expensive than optical-scan paper ballots.

“We should be steering our counties to hand-marked, paper ballots,” Kellner said. The ExpressVote, he said, “is significantly more expensive … and lacks the trust” voters have in the paper-ballot system.

“That’s not our job,” Peter Kosinski, a Republican board member, shot back. He contended the board’s role is to set specifications for voting machines and then determine models offered by companies do so. If counties feel the touch screen is too expensive or is less trusted by local voters, “that’s up to counties to decide,” Kosinski said. He favored certification of the machine.

Anthony Casale, the other Republican member, noted the board’s professional and technical staff favored certifying the ExpressVote, saying it met all the audit and verification mandates.

In the end, Andrew Spano, the other Democratic commissioner, sided with a GOP-backed resolution to approve the machine pending the coding update.

Common Cause New York criticized the outcome, calling it an "exceedingly poor decision ahead of the 2024 presidential election year when election security remains a fraught topic."

By Yancey Roy

yancey.roy@newsday.com@yanceyroy