April 22, 2025
By Allegra Dengler & George Klein, Election Reform Task Force of the Atlantic Chapter, Sierra Club
It is essential that New York defend our current system of hand marked paper ballots counted on scanners.
Trump and Musk are dismantling major climate research and moving ahead aggressively with more oil and gas drilling - and even coal. With thousands of EPA scientists laid off, Trump and Musk seek to cripple climate action at a particularly critical moment to avoid catastrophic climate change.
At the same time, they are advancing a relentless attack on democracy, including our election infrastructure.
Sierra Club’s Atlantic Chapter supports election law reform to protect the vote count.
Sierra Club works to get candidates elected who will work for good environmental laws. We also support election law reform to ensure that the vote count reflects the will of the voters. This is part of our ongoing “good government” work.
Thanks to our work and the work of our allies for evidence-based elections, New York Election Law now requires a full hand recount when the margin of victory is less than 0.5%.
Our elections now face a big new threat.
Over the objections of cybersecurity experts, and in violation of existing New York law, in 2023 the NYS Board of Elections approved the ES&S Expressvote XL (ES&S XL) made by Election Systems & Software by a vote of 3 to 1.The ES&S XL touchscreen voting machine does not use hand marked paper ballots but instead prints a summary card and counts the vote encoded in a barcode. Common Cause has a lawsuit against the decision, but even if the lawsuit is successful, legislation is needed to protect our voting system against similar machines in the future.
Insist that your elected officials at every level protect the vote count
The Atlantic Chapter endorses:
The Voting Integrity and Verification Act of New York (VIVA NY S7116/ A6287) to protect our right to vote on a paper ballot, and
Count Every Vote Act of NY (CEVA, S471 / A4307) to clarify the definition of a close vote margin
Some counties already are lining up to buy the ES&S XL, despite the expense and vulnerability to hacking and breakdown. Currently, this includes Nassau County, New York City, Monroe County and Suffolk County. If they buy these, half of New York voters will vote on machines whose vote count can’t be verified.
Our election systems have been breached by partisan operatives
In 2022, records, video camera footage and deposition testimony produced in a civil case in Georgia disclosed that its Dominion voting system, used statewide, had been breached over multiple days by operatives hired by attorneys for Donald Trump and shared with other Trump allies and operatives.
Trump attorney Sidney Powell and bail bondsman Scott Hall pleaded guilty to conspiring with others to access election equipment and hiring a computer forensics firm to copy software and data from voting machines and computers.
Technicians who obtained copies of the software testified that operatives had access for more than three years to the software for the central servers, tabulators, and highly restricted election databases of both ES&S, and Dominion.
In late 2023, voting experts wrote Attorney General Merrick Garland to warn of ‘serious threats’ for 2024 from election equipment software breaches. Their concerns were not addressed.
On November 13, 2024, Duncan Buell Ph.D.Chair Emeritus Computer Science and Engineering USC, Susan Greenhalgh of Free Speech for People and other election security experts wrote candidate Kamala Harris asking her to request targeted recounts. They wrote "The facts around the voting system breaches are not disputed; it is well- documented that there were severe, multiple voting security breaches before the 2024 election. “ However, the Harris campaign did not request recounts.
In addition, the current administration in Washington is kneecapping our election security
In February 2025, the administration shuttered the FBI’s Foreign Influence Task Force and cut more than one hundred positions at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA).
CISA was tasked with protecting our critical infrastructure from attack, including our elections which are designated as critical infrastructure. The administration cut off all funds to CISA’s Election Infrastructure Information Sharing and Analysis Center—a Department of Homeland Security–funded organization that helps state and local officials monitor, analyze, and respond to cyberattacks targeting the nation’s election hardware and software.
This makes it easier for foreign adversaries like Russia, as well as internal malefactors, to attack our elections and our democracy.
Larry Norden, an election expert with the Brennan Center for Justice, said that “the actions send a message that securing U.S. elections against interference from countries such as Russia, China and Iran is no longer a federal government priority”, said “I think we would be naive to think that the bad guys don’t get that message, too, that there’s going to be less of a cop on the beat to protect our elections.”
Without the help of the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, it is critical that New York leaders and Boards of Elections protect the vote count here. CISA provided important support to our election officials. Now New York is on its own to protect our vote count. The key to protecting our elections from computerized vote counting is hand marked paper ballots.
The public should know who’s counting our votes, but we don’t.
ES&S and Dominion Voting Systems are both owned by private equity funds, with loyalty to their bottom line and their undisclosed ownership, not voters. As private equity funds, their obligation is to make money, not to ensure secure elections.
There have been efforts to find out the ownership, including in a lawsuit in North Carolina in 2019. The NAACP and the Center for Democracy & Technology in Washington, D.C. sued to find out if there was foreign ownership of the companies that make equipment that’s used in our elections. The companies refused to answer, since the ownership is hidden behind private equity firms.
In 2018 and 2019, Congress tried hard to pass legislation to protect our elections which would have required disclosure of ownership. Both bills failed in the US Senate along party lines.
At that time, Lawrence Norden, an expert on voting machines with the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University’s law school, said “It’s hard to think of many services that are of greater public importance than running our elections. The public should know who is doing that and who has control over the companies that are doing that.”
What You Can Do
Now is the time to stand up and safeguard New York State elections against the security breaches that have occurred at ES&S and Dominion and the vulnerability of computerized vote counts. Insist that your New York State assembly members and senators support and pass legislation to protect our right to vote on paper ballots, with audits adequate to detect machine breakdown or fraud.
Let your legislators know you support:
The Voting Integrity and Verification Act of New York (VIVA NY S7116/ A6287
Count Every Vote Act of NY (CEVA, S471 / A4307)
Provide oversight of our vote counting yourself
Be a poll worker
Volunteer with a campaign to make sure the vote count is verified. Only people authorized by a candidate can observe the vote counting and recanvass.
Run for office yourself, fight for the environment and observe the vote count.
Only donate to candidates that pledge not to concede until every vote is counted and verified.
George Klein: lowerhudson@gmail.com
Allegra Dengler: cvivoterny@gmail.com