Common Cause/NY Testifies Today on Early Voting

NEW YORK, NY (04/30/2019) (readMedia)-- Today Common Cause/NY Executive Director, Susan Lerner, will testify before the New York City Council Committee on Governmental Operations about how best to implement early voting. In January New York became the 38th state in the nation thanks to the Let NY Vote coalition of which Common Cause/NY is a founding member. Lerner's full testimony is attached, with key excerpts below.

Number and Location of Early Voting Sites

Although we will not know with certainty until May 1, the number and location of the early voting sites, indications are that the Board of Elections is approaching this topic in a narrow and inappropriate way. It is important that there be sufficient early voting locations. Seven early voting sites per borough will not be sufficient. In large Colorado counties, with lower populations than New York City boroughs, there are 25-35 early voting centers per county. At a minimum, there should be at least one early voting site per Assembly District. We endorse the Mayor's willingness to identify city-owned sites which would be appropriate for early voting. All sites must be ADA-compliant and convenient to public transportation or sited on or near major thoroughfares. As in other states, early voting sites located in what the Board of Elections might think of as unconventional sites, such as shopping centers, libraries, and transit hubs, such as the ferry terminals on Staten Island, must be included.

Voting Centers

It is essential that the New York City board of elections set up voting centers at which any voter registered in the borough may vote. Ultimately, New York City's voters should be able to vote at any location anywhere in the city, as do Los Angeles voters. New York's early voting law states a clear preference for allowing voters to vote early in any early voting poll site in their county. It would be completely unacceptable for the New York City board of elections to assign each voter to only one early polling location, based on the voter's residence address. There are limited exceptions to the law's preference which should not be applicable in New York City, if the Mayor and the Council follow through and allocate the funding which the Mayor has specified in his Executive Budget.

There is no reason, other than funding, why the city board could not purchase Ballot on Demand systems, which allow poll workers to quickly and economically print any ballot style at early voting locations, as needed. Ballot on Demand systems do not require certification by the state board of elections and are available from many different vendors. The Legislature is on track to amend the Election Law to simplify the type of ballots which may be used, eliminating the city board's stubborn and mistaken insistence that ballot on demand systems can't handle New York style ballots. Los Angeles, Chicago, Baltimore, Phoenix, Albuquerque, Asheville, Boston, Cleveland and various locations in Texas are just some of the cities which use Ballot on Demand systems to facilitate voting at county-wide voting centers. The New York City board's assertion in a March letter to the state board that "The City Board has concluded that utilizing paper ballots is virtually impossible for early voting" is simply absurd and flies in the face of experience throughout the country. The fact that the board would reach such a conclusion shows that it is being ill-advised by its non-professional staff and the vendors who have an out-sized and questionable influence on that staff.

Early Voting Hours and Staffing

The early voting law sets minimum hours in which early voting locations must be open, including at least a minimum of 2 evenings until 8 pm and five hours for each day on the weekends. The law also specifies that wait times for voters must not exceed 30 minutes at any early voting site. We are concerned that the board will not adequately staff early voting sites, based on past unwillingness to utilize split shifts. Experience in other states shows that polling hours and staffing should anticipate likely surge times: lunch hours (12-2 pm), after work (5-7 pm) and all day on Saturdays. Not only must the early voting poll sites be open during those hours, there should be extra staff assigned to accommodate larger numbers of voters at those times. The city board has shown an unwillingness to utilize such sensible staffing arrangements on election days in the past , although state law has been expressly changed to allow such staffing. The city board must be required to use contemporary staffing practices, as perfected by private industry, for early voting.

Build on Experiences of Other States by Hiring Professional Election Administrators as Consultants to Help Design an Effective and Efficient Early Voting System

It is inexplicable why the New York City board approaches any new requirement as if it had to reinvent the wheel every single time. Relying solely on the advice of election technology vendors presents obvious conflicts of interest. Additionally, the board's executive director's objectivity is compromised because he was wined and dined on a special undisclosed advisory board for years by the vendor ES&S. The board should not be relying on his biased opinions and he should be required to recuse himself from any purchase decisions. Instead, the board should retain a professional election administrator with experience with early voting in other states and without any compromising ties to any vendors as a consultant to advise it.

Avoid Expensive and Insecure Voting Equiptment

The track record of the companies that dominate the voting technology field has been disappointing, to put it mildly. Currently, as they have in the past, those companies are pushing expensive, insecure and outmoded types of voting machines. Currently, New York City uses the most up-to-date and secure voting technology, which are paper ballots, marked by the voter, either by hand or with the assistance of a ballot marking device, and fed by the voter into an optical scanner. Adding electronic pollbooks and utilizing ballot on demand technology would be more than adequate for early voting in New York City.

It is significant that both the city and the state have made money available to purchase appropriate technology for early voting. The use of epollbooks has been authorized and certification of epollbooks is well on track to be accomplished by early June. Ballot on Demand systems do not require certification and could be purchased at any time. The city board mistakenly insists that there are special requirements in state law requiring ballot features which cannot be printed by the systems – a strange assertion, as the systems are currently in use to print absentee ballots at borough board offices. In any case, the section of Election Law which the board mistakenly relies is being amended.

The city board has expressed a desire to purchase ExpressVote XL machines, based on the flabbergasting assertion that "The City Board has concluded that utilizing traditional paper ballots is virtually impossible for early voting," This would be news to cities such as Los Angeles, Cleveland, Albuquerque, Cleveland, Baltimore, Raleigh and Asheville, among others, all of whom use paper ballots, as we mentioned earliuer. Larger counties in Colorado have 400-600 ballot styles, yet they manage to use paper ballots by utilizing ballot on demand printing systems. The experience of Denon County, Texas is instructive. After a disastrous election in 2016 using touchscreen machines, the county switched to paper ballots using ballot on demand and conducted the election in 2018 without a hitch. The expensive, hard to transport ExpressVote XL has numerous flaws, in addition to being very expensive. It uses the widely discredited touchscreen technology. The "summary ballot" it produces is very difficult to read, being small and behind glass. It is guaranteed to produce long waiting lines, as only 1 person can use it at a time. If any part of the machine breaks down, then it is completely out of commission and there is no work-around, as it only reads special ballots printed by ES&S, the ExpressVote XL vendor, not regular hand-marked or emergency ballots. This is only the barest beginning of a description of the things that are objectionable with this machine. It poses unique opportunities to be hacked. Common Cause/NY cites to, and incorporates by reference, the testimony offered by Kevin Skoglund, a cybersecurity expert from Pennsylvania who has studied the ExpressVote XL. It is essential that the City Council use its budget power to ensure that the city board does not purchase or use these unacceptable machines.