Comment: Counties are now free to purchase the Express Vote XL. So the battle to keep it out of the state now switches to the counties.  Onondaga County at least has decided against it, choosing Clear Ballot which prints a ballot we mark ourselves like we have been doing for years.  The counties most  at risk of buying the XL already have ES&S voting systems, like  New York City and Nassau County.  ALLEGRA DENGLER

 "The county considered new voting systems from four different companies that won certification from New York state election officials – Clear Vote, Dominion, Hart InterCivic and Express Vote XL….One of the systems, Express Vote XL, became the source of controversy last week after New York election officials certified it for use in the state….Government watchdog groups criticized the move because the touch screen machines would replace the traditional paper ballot voting system."

Last week, the New York State Board of Elections (NYSBOE) voted to certify the ExpressVote XL, a touch screen voting machine that would allow voters to mark their ballot electronically on a touch screen instead of on traditional paper ballots. So far, Boards of Election Commissioners in New York City, Ulster, Onondaga and Chautauqua counties have said they have no plans to buy the machines.

Editorial: No vote of confidence on touchpad voting system
In a split decision, the state Board of Elections approves controversial voting machines. The last thing we need right now is more doubt over election processes.
Times Union Editorial Board

Last week, the New York State Board of Elections (NYSBOE) voted to certify the ExpressVote XL, a touch screen voting machine that would allow voters to mark their ballot electronically on a touch screen instead of on traditional paper ballots. So far, Boards of Election Commissioners in New York City, Ulster, Onondaga and Chautauqua counties have said they have no plans to buy the machines.

CNN: "Last year, a former Trump official testified ... that plans to access voting systems in Georgia were discussed in meetings at the White House, including during an Oval Office meeting on December 18, 2020,  that included Trump. ...Six days before pro-Trump operatives gained unauthorized access to voting systems, the local elections official who allegedly helped facilitate the breach sent a “written invitation” to attorneys working for Trump, according to text messages obtained by CNN…"

The American Bar Association has formed a new task force which aims to ensure that election administration remains nonpartisan and educate Americans on “on the importance of an inclusive, strong, and enduring democracy.”

At noon today, the two Democrats and two Republicans on the state Board of Elections will consider whether to approve the use of a new voting machine that harms the security and surety of elections. The board must say no to the ExpressVote XL, heavily pushed by its manufacturer, Election Systems & Software, looking to reap millions in peddling this contraption.

Sorry, our democracy is not for sale, despite all the New York lobbyists and lawyers and schmoozers that ES&S has hired.

The New York State Board of Elections on Wednesday approved the use of a controversial touchscreen election voting system, allowing municipalities the option to use the ExpressVote XL machine.

The certification vote, at the end of several hours of dialogue between the Board of Elections’ bipartisan panel of commissioners, was 3 to 1.

Five years ago I described a serious security flaw in the design of all-in-one voting machines made by two competing manufacturers, ES&S and Dominion. These all-in-one machines work like this: the voter indicates choices on a touchscreen; then a printer prints the votes onto a paper ballot; the voter has a chance to review the ballot to make sure the right choices are printed; then the machine sends the ballot past an optical scanner to record and tabulate the votes. Then the mechanism drops the paper into a ballot box where it is saved for recounts or audits.

The New York State Board of Elections may certify the ES&S Expressvote XL as early as this Thursday July 27. Let them know you oppose the ExpressVote XL and want to keep our current system of marking our paper ballots ourselves. Email your comments to 

• Email: INFO@elections.ny.gov

Sample comment:

“Raffensperger’s decision not to fix these systems represents “the height of irresponsibility,” Halderman said in an interview. “Even if there’s no actual attack, you better believe that there are people who are going to use the existence of these problems to call into question the results of elections.”...Any part of any voting system that’s ever been subjected to truly independent review has been found to have significant security issues,” said John Sebes, chief technology officer of the TrustTheVote Project and a co-director of the OSET Institute….“We’ve got to be able to have a conversation about that without being wrapped up around the flag of MAGA conspiracy theorists,” he added.”

“.. our findings suggest a systemic failure in voting system design and regulation. ... the result is a brittle system, which we fully expect has additional, similarly serious problems left to be found. We also expect that there are similar problems in voting equipment and software from other manufacturers, who operate under the same regulations and incentives as Dominion, but whose equipment has yet to receive the same intense public scrutiny.

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Remember when you first went to vote and realized that the lever machines were gone?

You may soon be in for a similar surprise. If the NY legislature fails to pass VIVA NY, the Voting Integrity and Verification Act of New York (A5934a/S6169a), your city or county could ditch hand-marked paper ballots in your polling place. You would have to mark your ballot through a touchscreen.

"Voter-marked paper ballots enable each voter to cast the votes he or she intends. They also allow election boards to perform manual recounts and audits to confirm final tallies….Several new voting systems on the market, however, require voters to use a touchscreen to enter their choices on a displayed image of the ballot. ...New Yorkers need to send emails and make telephone calls to urge swift passage of Voting Integrity and Verification Act of New York (VIVA NY), number A5934-A/S6169-A We should contact Speaker of the Assembly Carl Heastie at Speaker@nyassembly.gov or (718) 654-6539. We must also contact Latrice Walker, chair of the Assembly Committee on Election Law, at WalkerL@nyassembly.gov or (718) 342-1256, as well as Zellnor Myrie, chair of the Senate Elections Committee, at myrie@nysenate.gov or (718) 284-4700."

To support our right to vote on paper ballots in New York, call State Senate Majority Leader Andrea Stewart-Cousins, and State Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie today.

Time: "Immediately after the settlement was announced (Fox $787.5 million), Poulos says, Dominion experienced a spike in death threats. Keeping his workforce safe remains a company priority…. Poulos emphasizied that Americans do not have to trust Dominion blindly because of its commitment to transparency and its existing capability of producing paper ballots. But that defense may come too late."

NYTimes; "The Trump allies who traveled to Coffee County copied elections software used across the state and uploaded it on the internet, creating the potential for future election manipulation, according to David Cross, a lawyer involved in civil litigation over election security in Georgia filed by the Coalition for Good Governance.”

SUMMARY: "Maybe now Jack Smith will start investigating the multi-state criminal plot by MAGA conspiracists to breach voting system software? Now that we know the unlawful scheme actually began in Donald Trump's Oval Office, as overseen by Trump himself, back in December of 2020? [Audio link to full show follows below.]"

SUMMARY: CNN  "On January 7, 2021..., two people walked into an elections office in Coffee County, Georgia...A local election official helped them gain access to sensitive voting data which they downloaded onto a portable hard drive.    ...That data was then uploaded to an encrypted server and shared with several Trump allies and operatives....In a December 2022 letter to the FBI, Susan Greenhalgh,…of Free Speech For People, described how copies of the voting data from Coffee County have been “shared covertly with an unknown number of election deniers.” The letter warned that the data “could be used to sow distrust in elections, fabricate evidence to challenge legitimate election results, or even to manipulate election results in the future.”...Greenhalgh ... has asked the FBI and Smith’s team to investigate the Coffee County breach as recently as this week…