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Friday, March 29, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Judge Wants New York’s|Voting Machines Tested

MINEOLA, N.Y. (CN) - A state Supreme Court judge ordered that the New York Board of Elections submit the electronic voting machines it approved for the September primaries to a testing facility in Connecticut. Nassau County and its Republican and Democratic Elections Commissioners claimed that the machine at issue, the ES&S DS-200, malfunctioned in Florida during the 2008 presidential elections.

Judge Michele Woodard's decision and order responded to a complaint filed in March by Nassau County and its two major parties. They sued the state after the Board of Elections demanded that pull-lever voting machines be replaced with computerized voting technology.

In the original complaint, Nassau County election commissioners said that lever machines have been "trusted" for more than a century. They did not want to have to replace them with electronic voting technology that "is notoriously vulnerable to systemic hacking, tampering, manipulation and malfunction."

Woodard's order also denied the state's request to stay Nassau County's lawsuit.

The original complaint alleged that the ES&S DS-200 machines malfunctioned in Florida during the 2008 presidential elections.

The New York State Board of Elections also authorized use of a Dominion voting machine, whose testing this decision does not demand.

"Since Nassau is not using Dominion's system, it would probably be very helpful for a Dominion county to arrange to have their machines evaluated by joining the lawsuit," said Howard Stanislevic, founder of the E-Voter Education Project, in a mass email.

The advocacy group Election Transparency Coalition has a map showing more than 20 counties that have passed resolutions or sent letters to the State Board of Elections opposing the transition.

The NAACP and other organizations have sued city and state officials in June on constitutional claims that that the new machines will disenfranchise "tens of thousands" of voters, particularly racial and language minorities.

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