Thursday, July 4, 2013

Lever machines may make comeback this year


From the Daily News:

It’s now officially up to Gov. Cuomo to decide whether old-fashioned lever voting machines can be used in city elections this year.

Legislation granting the city Board of Elections authority to use the machines for this year’s primary and runoff elections was sent to Cuomo’s office Tuesday. He must decide by July 13th whether to sign or veto the measure, which was approved by the Senate and Assembly before the close of the legislative session last month.

Cuomo spokesman Rich Azzopardi said the governor is still reviewing the bill and has not made a decision on whether to sign it.

City elections officials have been pushing to use the older machines because of fears they would not be able to complete recounts in time if modern, optical scan voting machines were used for the primary or runoff. The optical scan machines rely on paper ballots for each voter, creating tremendous amounts of paper that would need to be hand-checked if a recount were required.

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