http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/02/nyregion/02vote.html?ex=1141966800&en=9945011582f23e30&ei=5070&emc=eta1
The New York Times
March 2, 2006
New
York Is Sued by U.S. on Delay of Vote System
By MICHAEL COOPER
ALBANY, March 1 — The Justice Department sued New York State
on Wednesday for failing to overhaul its election system and replace its aging
voting machines. It is the first lawsuit the federal government has filed to
force a state to comply with the voting guidelines enacted by Congress after
the 2000 election debacle.
The new federal guidelines were designed to prevent the kind
of electoral chaos that marred the 2000 presidential election in Florida, and
to make casting ballots easier for disabled voters. But New York State's
efforts to modernize its election system have fallen far behind the rest of the
nation, delayed by Albany's chronic gridlock and partisan bickering.
New York was supposed to create a statewide database of
registered voters by Jan. 1 to make it easier to register and to detect fraud.
It has not even come close to doing so, the lawsuit contends.
And while New York has accepted more than $49 million in
federal aid to replace its creaky mechanical voting machines by this fall's
elections, it has yet to tell localities what kinds of new voting machines will
be acceptable. So most counties say it will be impossible to buy new machines
and train poll workers in time.
The lawsuit calls on the court to give the state 30 days to
develop a plan for fully complying with the law in time for the fall elections.
At this late date, though, it is doubtful that the state will be able to do so.
State officials, who do not dispute that they have failed to comply, say that
they hope to reach a settlement that sets out several stopgap compliance
measures.
New York — which has received more than $221 million in
federal funds so far to overhaul its voting system — could stand to lose some
or all of the $49 million it has received for new voting machines, according to
the lawsuit, which was filed here Wednesday in United States District Court for
the Northern District of New York.
Other states — including Connecticut, Pennsylvania,
California and Ohio — have struggled to carry out some provisions of the federal
law, the Help America Vote Act. But election-reform advocates and the Justice
Department say New York ranks dead last when it comes to complying with it.
In January, Wan J. Kim, the assistant attorney general for
the Justice Department's civil rights division, wrote in a letter to the state
that "it is clear that New York is not close to approaching full H.A.V.A.
compliance and, in our view, is further behind in that regard than any other
state in the country."
Civic groups have long warned that New York's aging election
machines are an accident waiting to happen. During the last three mayoral
elections in New York City, there has been confusion over the vote tallies in
either primaries or runoff elections.
The suit was a stinging rebuke to the state and once again
highlighted Albany's failure to address pressing state issues, like its
two-decade-long failure to pass a state budget on time or its unwillingness to
comply with a court decision ordering more state aid to New York City schools.
The Justice Department noted in a news release on Wednesday
that "states had nearly three years to comply with the provisions enforced
under today's lawsuit" and said that New York "was not close to
compliance" with the federal law. No other state has been sued for failing
to comply with the law, but Justice Department officials say that they are
having discussions with some other states about their voting plans.
The state and the Justice Department have been negotiating
for weeks to try to avoid a lawsuit, and state officials said that they expect
those talks to continue. "We've engaged in extensive negotiations and,
despite the lawsuit, we are hopeful an agreement can be reached to resolve this
matter," said Christine Pritchard, a spokeswoman for the attorney
general's office, which is defending the state.
Recent negotiations have centered on settling the suit with
a consent decree that would create a stopgap measure for this fall's elections,
when New Yorkers will choose a United States senator, a governor, an attorney
general, a comptroller and all 212 state lawmakers.
The measure, which elections officials call "Plan
B," would allow the old mechanical voting machines to be used again this
fall, while making options available for disabled voters at each polling site.
The alternatives could involve machines that would print ballots, which could
then be marked, and a system for disabled people to cast votes by phone.
The efforts to modernize the system have proceeded at a
glacial pace, even with the infusion of federal money. The State Legislature
dragged its feet on passing a state law to overhaul the election system because
the issue became tied up with a partisan squabble over appointments at the
state's Board of Elections.
The law that it passed and that Gov. George E. Pataki
finally signed last summer left many of the biggest issues unresolved. It was
left to the counties to decide what brand of voting machines to buy, and to the
State Board of Elections to set the standards telling them which types of
voting machines will be acceptable.
The board has yet to set the standards, and localities,
including New York City, have complained that the most recent proposals are
unacceptable.
Election officials say that they plan to model their
statewide voter database — which was supposed to be set up by Jan. 1 — on a
system used by the State of Washington.
The lawsuit notes that the state has yet to publish the
rules governing how the database should be compiled. Nor has it begun seeking
contractors to create the list, or established the technical requirements for
the list.
Robert Brehm, a spokesman for the Board of Elections, said
that the board believes it can have an interim voter database up and running by
July or August, and have the final database ready in the beginning of 2007.
Civic groups, which have complained for years that New York
was moving too slowly, are now concerned that the federal lawsuit will rush the
state into adopting a flawed voting system. "The rotten H.A.V.A.
implementation process on the state level shouldn't be mirrored by a rotten
judicial enforcement process at the federal level trying to impose a solution
on New York," said Neal Rosenstein, the government coordinator for the New
York Public Interest Research Group.
Copyright 2006The New York Times Company
FAIR USE NOTICE
This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of political, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.