ALBANY — The State Board of Elections is slated to vote Thursday on new touchscreen voting machines that advocates and lawmakers say are known for undercounting and can’t handle the city’s soon-to-be-implemented ranked-choice voting system.
A coalition of legislators is calling on the board to vote against using the Express Vote XL from Election Software & Systems, arguing that they’re too expensive and prone to trouble.
“New York should stick with the gold standard — voter marked paper ballots which voters themselves place in a scanner,” the lawmakers wrote to the board Wednesday. “As lawmakers, we have worked tirelessly to reform New York’s election laws — this would be a huge step backwards.”
The touchscreen machines allow voters to mark their ballot electronically instead of on traditional paper ballots that are fed into a scanner. Proponents say the XL is more efficient and functions as a two-in-one machine by marking ballots and then tabulating votes.
Susan Greenhalgh, senior advisor on election security with advocacy group Free Speech For People, said there are major concerns regarding safety since ES&S still uses Windows 7 as its operating software despite vowing to upgrade the machines.
“A year and a half later, they are still hawking Windows 7 systems, which demonstrates a blatant disregard for the most rudimentary cybersecurity principles. This should be disqualifying in itself,” Greenhalgh said.
Critics also contend that the costly machines are ill-equipped for ranked-choice voting and don’t allow non-English speakers the chance to independently verify their vote.
“As many advocates have warned, this machine is highly problematic: it produces unverifiable results, has malfunctioned in other states in recent elections, and, perhaps worst of all, cannot even print non-English ballots,” Assemblywoman Catalina Cruz (D-Queens) said in a separate statement.
An ES&S spokeswoman said the XL was used in multiple states in the 2020 election without incident and called complaints about the machines “baseless and irrational.”
Board of Elections spokesman John Conklin said ES&S, like any other vendor, paid an examination fee and the board is obliged to consider and vote on its equipment regardless of whether any local boards intend to purchase the machines.
“Certification does not guarantee that any county board of elections will ever purchase the voting system or that it will in use in New York State,” he added.
