From SmartElections
A Cosmic, Supersize thanks to everyone who helped research & draft the letter, signed onto the letter, sent the letter, sent to your contacts, posted on social media, spoke at the meeting and contributed to this BIG victory.
It's a big big step - to beat back these voting machines that as Professor Andrew Appel said, "will deteriorate our security and our ability to have confidence in our elections,."
Here are details: Yesterday, the New York State Board of Elections held a hearing regarding the certification of the ExpressVote XL. The commissioners agreed NOT to certify the voting machine at that meeting. They will review the matter again in two weeks, at a special meeting 1/28th at noon to take the final vote.
This is a big victory - but a temporary one.
Next, we continue our targeted advocacy for this issue to ensure that we nail the coffin on the ExpressVote XL in New York. Together we can improve our elections!
We hope that you'll keep your eyes on this fight as we move toward the 1/28th ACTUAL VOTE.
We'll be sending out links and social media posts to act on and share. Thank you again for all your wonderful work!
Let's keep winning!
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• OPINION
A machine to vote against: New York is poised to approve a voting system that fails the test
By DAILY NEWS EDITORIAL BOARD
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |
JAN 14, 2021 AT 4:00 AM
ExpressVote XL by Election Systems & Software (ES&S) (Verifiedvoting.org)
The four-member state Board of Elections (two Democrats and two Republicans, natch) should unite as a bloc today to reject certification of a voting machine, the ExpressVote XL, that undermines the sound and practical use of paper ballots. And that’s not the only way it fails.
The commissioners claim they have no choice if the gizmo, made by Election Systems & Software, the other big industry player besides Trump boogeyman Dominion, met a set of standards put in place long ago. Besides the fact that the obsolete ExpressVote XL uses Windows 7 software from 2009, it violates New York election law by failing to let voters have ballots in Spanish or Chinese.
ExpressVote XL users select their picks on a touch screen, suboptimal in a germophobic age. Then, to comply with the requirement of a permanent paper record, the machine prints a little grocery store receipt that is visible behind a see-through plastic covering. If the voter determines that the receipt is correct, the vote is cast. If it’s wrong, the vote is canceled. But while the screen shows multiple languages, the stupid machine can only print in English. Ay, caramba.
Even if it could handle multilingual printing, it would still be a loser. The flimsy receipts are tiny and hard to see, and in a hand count would be a nightmare to tally. And the words on the receipts are just a summary. The details are in a bar code. Real paper is far superior.
Then there’s the problem that, as more and more people are now voting by mail, the new machine would usher in two very different kinds of ballots: One via mail and one in person.
As we said almost exactly a year ago, Jan. 20, the Legislature must override the board if the ExpressVote XL is approved.