New Yorkers Sold Down the River, Pilot Will Put Uncertified Voting Machines in 45 of 60 Counties

Another title might be New Yorkers sold Piece O Crap Voting machines.  The New York State Board of Elections has voted to aid voting machine vendors by allowing "pilots" of uncertified voting machines.  This pilot will put nearly 1 million votes at risk. In case you didn't know, pilots are Trojan Horses, they are a way of sneaking the camel's nose into the tent. Then in a bit, the entire camel takes over the inside of the tend. In the name of "election pilots" the law is broken, election transparency betrayed.

New York Rolls Out Uncertified Voting Systems for 2009 Elections E-Voter Education Project Friday, May 22, 2009  Posted by Howard Stanislevic

ALBANY -- At a May 12th Commissioners' meeting, after collaborating with the US Dept. of Justice, the New York State Board of Elections cavalierly decided to risk the disenfranchisement of nearly a million of the state's voters, by allowing what one commissioner called a "huge pilot" of uncertified software-driven electronic vote-counting systems around the state in 45 of its 62 counties.

Here are the links to the Commissioners' resolution, and other documents containing the details of the plan:


Authorizing Resolution 05/12/2009 (PDF 50KB)

Pilot Plan Narrative 05/12/2009 (PDF 65KB)

Timeline 05/12/2009 (PDF 492KB)

County Participation Spreadsheet 05/12/2009 (PDF 42KB)

Over 900,000 voters (read: guinea pigs) could be affected by these irresponsible tests, which one county election commissioner, perhaps unwittingly, compared to filling out lottery tickets. Gambling with the votes of a million New Yorkers is hardly a way to instill public confidence.

The plan contains almost no provisions for manual recounts of the paper ballots to check the computer tallies, other than those that might be obtained through the courts. The only exceptions are for contests with a margin of victory of 1% or less. Full recounts of those contests will be conducted, but we bristle at the suggestion that the victory margin reported by the uncertified voting system will be the one used to determine whether or not the hand count to check the system will take place.

Commissioner Douglas Kellner made a motion at the May 12th meeting to allow any candidate to ask for and obtain a full hand recount. His fellow commissioners defeated it by a bipartisan 3 to 1 vote.

... more at the link

So you see the folks pushing for these Piece-O-Crap voting machines know that their purpose is defeated if full hand counts can be requested.
Because the hand counts will prove the machines can't count accurately, or are not counting honestly. The whole point of voting machines is to let the computer decide.