Does Your Vote Count?

After Florida's hanging chad fiasco in the 2000 Presidential Election, you think we would have gotten it right by now. Think again. Although "The Help America Vote Act of 2002" was passed to correct voting problems and help the disabled vote, it took New York State until 2010 to switch from manual levers to electronic voting machines. Albany was even sued by the Justice Department in 2006 for lack of compliance with the new law. New York's first electronic voting run, during the Sept. 14 primary, was far from perfect. Voters were put off by something that had never seen before. They complained ballots were confusing or tough to read; they saw broken down machines or none at all.

A review by State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli says there were problems in all five New York City boroughs, with more than 700 sites experiencing voting machine malfunctions, numerous reports of poll sites opening late, and improperly trained poll workers. "That was a royal screw up," Mayor Michael Bloomberg said of the primary. The New York Board of Elections is now re-training 36-thousand poll workers to better serve voters on November 2nd, says BOE Commissioner J.C. Polansco. It's also offering voters a pre-election day demonstration. Keep in mind - other states are electronically-challenged too. In Illinois, Gubernatorial candidate Rich Whitney's name was spelled "Rich Whitey" on some machines - and poll workers are working feverishly to correct the mistake before November 2nd.

Ohio, Florida and California have had persistent problems, too, with things like improperly filled out ballots and machine malfunctions. Lawrence Norden, from the NYU Brennan Center, who studies elections, says New York may have avoided some problems if it had conducted a trial run with the new machines. Norden claims many voting problems could be avoided if states actually shared information. "There's no central place where voting problems are reported and somebody can screen them and then report to election officials, 'here's a common problem with your machine, be aware of it.' "