By Steve Levy
So we see once again that Suffolk County is buying more electronic voting machines at a cost of $31 million, and is now telling fire departments, schools, and villages that they are on their own in having to purchase these machines for the upcoming elections. https://paper.newsday.com/html5/reader/production/default.aspx?edid=6c378428-729d-4d30-a40c-d27d98275872&pnum=2
If the county is going to stop supplying these machines for these other levels of government, they should at least give more notice so that these entities can include them in their future budgets.
But the other question is whether we should rethink the whole concept of electronic machines in the first place. When I was county executive, I brought a lawsuit seeking to prevent the county from being forced to buy these expensive machines. Unfortunately, it was not successful. There was nothing wrong with the older machines or the paper system. They were inexpensive and hack-proof. We had no complaints about their integrity.
It was only after the 2000 presidential election and the problems created with the moronic butterfly ballot in Florida that the issue became more prominent. But rather than just fixing that poor system, the feds went crazy and passed the Help America Vote Act, which mandated changes in all 50 states. It led to New York expending hundreds of millions of dollars for these new machines that weren’t necessary.
While there hasn’t been an evidence-based huge hacking scandal yet, a university professor showed a judge in real time how he could change votes on an electronic machine with a credit card and a Bic pen. Why flirt with this?