Nov. 6, 2007: Lever voting machines dumped

[Record-Journal]

The days of voting by lever symbolically ended Monday, when Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz oversaw the dropping of one of the decades-old machines onto the waiting bed of a truck that would haul it off to be destroyed.

At the same time, municipalities across Connecticut, many for the first time, rolled out new electronic voting machines, which proponents considered superior to the old lever machines because they leave a paper trail that can be verified in case of questionable outcomes.

“We have worked hard, worked long hours and we’re done,” said Cheshire Democratic Registrar of Voters Aleta Looker. “We’re ready.”

In Cheshire, rolling cabinets stocked with the machines and everything else moderators will need have been dispatched to voting sites for today’s municipal election.

Voters accustomed to the lever machines may be a bit surprised by the change.

There is no longer a curtain-enclosed booths to step into, but Looker said there should be no privacy issues.

Voting booths with three sides, where the ballots are filled out, will be set up facing a wall so no one can look in.

Once the ballot is filled out, voters can place it inside a privacy folder to take it to the voting machine, where the ballots are scanned.

“You can carry them from polling booth to the optical scanner without anyone seeing anything,” Looker said.

Bob Sherman, the Republican registrar of voters in Southington, said the new machines, which the town has used in a previous election, are working out great. “It performed flawlessly,” he said.

He emphasized the security of the machines’ storage. They are kept in locked cabinets that only the registrars have access to, and equipped with seals, Sherman said.

Previously, Southington had found it problematic to store the bulky lever machines, but the smaller electronic ones, which fold into something the size of a suitcase, are kept in the registrar of voter’s office.

Today’s vote will mark the end of a blitz by the secretary of the state’s office to educate more than 2,000 municipal election officials on electronic voting procedure and to show the public, by television and print ads as well as by 200 demonstrations, how to work the new machines.

The preparatory work to switch over to electronic voting began over two years ago.

Bysiewicz said that across the state, the deployment had gone off more or less without a hitch.

She stressed there are videos that can be watched at voting places for anyone who is confused.

Also on Monday, Bysiewicz formalized an agreement with University of Connecticut to check all voting machine memory cards before and after voting for any tampering or errors.

But her office won’t be taking a break, she said. After today, she’ll begin preparation for the Feb. 5 primary vote.

In Meriden, there haven’t been too many calls from confused residents, said Lillian ‘Toni’ Soboleski, the Republican registrar of voters. “I expected a whole bunch of calls, and we didn’t get them,” she said.

More alarming than the new machines, however, are how few will vote on them, Soboleski said.

“We never have a great turnout, for municipal elections anyway,” she said.

“People are given this great opportunity and how many turn out? Thirty three percent, maybe?”

[tjohnl]

I just voted in Meriden, I like the old way better. more privacy.

[eds]

Good riddance!

[eds]

Here was my voting experience:

Walk in
Show id
Take form to the table that had three PRIVACY screens (who needs more privacy? It's not your taxes you're filling out.)
Use provided pen and look for my candidate's name
Color in the circle next to the name
Walk to the machine
Put sheet in the machine
Walk out

Total time: 1 minute 25 seconds.

It took me longer to park my car and walk into the building than to vote.

With the old machines I had to wait for a booth to free up. With the new ballots I could have just filled it out standing right there where they gave it to me. I didn't need to use tiny the little desk with the privacy screen.

If you can read and can color you can vote. A fifth grader could do it. I'd even bet a second grader could do it. A cave man could do it. Look for name. Color circle black. That was easy.

There was a person there who looked like she was taking a test for heaven's sake. She had the look of concentration on her like she was thinking "What's the right answer....ooooh I know this one! Think! Think!"

I can't for the life of me figure out what is so damn difficult.

[Scouter]

Thanks to the tax payer dollars spent on television advertisements, post cards, newspaper advertisements, DVD instructional videos, phone in instructional guides...etc I and everyone except those who sit in dark rooms without windows 24/7 was aware of the switch in voting machines.

The nostalgia of the clicking of levers and the ca-chunk of the lever that registered your vote and opened the privacy curtain with authority is all that I miss from those old machines. The lever voting machines are gone...that's progress.

At my polling station in Meriden at 7:00 am the marker which was restrained to the "privacy booth" had already been liberated. I found it inside one of the "privacy envelopes" (manila folders) on the table. I hope the state of Connecticut invests in plenty of markers because I know that pens put out at banks and reception desks tend to disappear really quickly. I'd be curious as to how many privacy booths closed down as a result of markers being stolen. Could an entire polling site be crippled by a plot to borrow the markers from the privacy booths for use in our home offices? It's difficult to disable a polling machine with levers and switches but not so difficult to make off with a marker. I'd suggest the state invest in more markers to keep our democracy from coming to a grinding halt or maybe upgrade the pen restraint device from rope to metal.

Overall the voting experience was great. From the time I reached the booth, found the marker, filled in lots of circles, walked to the scanning machine, received the "I voted today" sticker.... one minute and thirty seconds.

[eds]

I would tend to agree that the ca-ching is kind of neat. Sort of like the old time register when you had to actually "register" the sale with a lever. That's why it was called a register.

Remember the rotary phones? When you had to dial zero it took forever, but dialing 1 was quick. I hated numbers that had zero in it. I kinda liked the rotary because you could actually DIAL a number because there was actually a DIAL! And it made a cool sound too like the old voting machines. I love mechanical things because they are like art to me.

I wonder if there is something special about the pen. Could I have used my own pen? I mean despite the so-called increase in taxes, I still can afford to buy a pen. A #2 pencil perhaps? They're even cheaper than pens. How about my golf pencil? Now that I think of it, do they even take tests in school where you need a #2 pencil? Maybe that was in the instructions I skipped. Oh well...I used their pen. No biggie.


You know this whole bit about "color in the circle without crossing the lines" is a bit misunderstood. You have a large margin of error. If this is your first time ever coloring a circle in, you might have a problem. Then again, if it is, you probably are just learning to tie your shoes. I colored in the circles with a fair degree of completeness and accuracy but it was not 100% black, and it was certainly not 100% in the lines and the machine didn't even blip one iota.

People make a mountain out of a mole hill sometimes.

[rapuda]

The new way is very easy however, the columns that seperate the candidates need to be more visible. When I was choosing the nine candidates for town council, I almost circled in the mayor. The line that divided the mayor from the town council was barely visible.