Friday, September 3, 2010

Nassau County Argues for Lever Machines in US Court of Appeals

On Wednesday, Nassau County Attorney John Ciampoli asked a three-judge panel at the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit to overrule District Court Judge Gary Sharpe's order to replace lever voting machines with computers to run this year's federal elections in New York.

Chief Judge Dennis Jacobs reportedly agreed with the county's assesment, saying that the new computerized ballot scanners were "more prone to fraud on a mass scale than a lever machine."

Adam Klasfeld of Courthouse News Service attended the hearing in lower Manhattan on Sept. 1 and filed this report.

This is the highest court to hear a case on the use of lever voting machines in federal elections since the Help America Vote Act of 2002 (HAVA), which made funds available to the states to replace lever machines and punch cards, was signed into law by President George W. Bush.

Nassau County continues to break new ground, making the arguments that should have been made by New York State attorneys in US v. NYS Board of Elections years ago. HAVA does not require the use of computers to count votes.