Despite Minor Glitches with Voting Machines, Residents Say They Would Need Time to Adjust

On Primary Tuesday as voters went to their polling locations, most of them had to use the new voting system for the first time. Across the board in Westchester, there were glitches with the procedure, as well as a low voter turnout.

A common complaint was that many locations were running late in the morning. Yorktown town clerk Alice Roker said there were no major delays when opening the polls, but inspectors did not anticipate taking them longer than last year. As a result some inspectors have suggested coming in earlier. 

"Anything that's new is going to have its problems," Roker said. 

She acknowledged that if there is a problem, people come up with a solution and the comments from the election would be presented to the president of the Board of Elections. In addition, she said the new voting process was all about the voter and inspectors should explain the procedure to everyone and tell them to be patient, to be careful to vote for only one person, and to be careful when completely darkening the oval. 

Poll inspectors from different districts said people have been complaining about the print being too small, going out of the lines when filling in their choice of candidate, wasting too much paper, and going back in time -- from paper ballots, to machines, and paper ballots again.

Although the primary election did not have a big turnout, poll inspectors expect more people to vote in November. Then polling locations would get crowded and people would have to wait in lines, Roker said. 

The biggest issue on everybody's mind was that there was no privacy while voting. The places, privacy booths, where voters marked their ballots were more open than in previous years, when a curtain closed behind the voter. People also complained that it took longer and the process required more instruction. 

Roker said some inspectors would have to be trained better to provide privacy to voters. 

Fred Silverman, who directed the documentary, Who Counts? Election Reform in America, about the 2000 election—which prompted the federal mandate resulting in the new machines—said the machines offered no transparency.

"The old machines could not be tampered with," he said, citing concerns about hacking. "This time, I put my ballot in, but who knows what happened to it after that?"

The state implemented the new voting technology after a federal law was passed in 20o2 that mandated changes in the voting process in the wake of the 2000 Gore vs. Bush election. ImageCast, is an update from the analog lever machines that voters throughout county have used during previous election cycles.

With anything new and unknown comes anxiety and fear, but once voters tested the new voting systems for themselves, they said the process was easy. 

"I didn't find it confusing," said Ken Brown, Mohegan Lake resident.

"There have been comments that people have not adjusted to the changes," inspector Chuck Radke said. "I'm sure it will take some time."

Alice Roker said the Town of Yorktown will do more training and demonstrations of the new voting system before the general election in November.