Although New York City may not sleep, it does procrastinate. NYC will be one of the last municipalities in the U.S. to adopt electronic voting machines for elections. In fact, had the old voting machines not been replaced by January 14th, the state government would have been forced to step in and select new electronic machines for the city.
The decision to contract for voting machines isn’t as easy as it may seem. Voting machines are graded on ease of usage, reliability, predicted years of use, and most importantly, accuracy. Contracts are often political battles; the NYC voting machine contract is no different. The NYC Board of Elections was tasked with choosing new voting machines for the city. After narrowing it down to two choices: Dominion, a Toronto based producer that would employ more than 60 New Yorkers (their proposal can be found here), or Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb (their proposal can be found here). ES&S, the dominant voting machine provider in the country, received slightly higher scores from the Board of Elections. The complete report and how scores were calculated can be found at Board of Elections. [Read more…] about New York City Selects New Electronic Voting Machines