These are my notes and thoughts about the first Efficiency and Reform committee meeting. In a new development, responsibility for the Board of Elections was transferred to the Efficiency and Reform committee late last week.

Most of the 2/6 meeting was taken up with discussion of a resolution concerning the legislatures preference for Paper Ballot / Optical Scan voting machines rather than computer based Direct Recording Electronic machines. [Link to Resolution here] Election Commissioner Tom Turco and most of the Republicans on the committee wanted more time to study the issue. In order to ensure bipartisan support for the resolution, the consensus of the committee was to wait until after a demonstration of the voting machines before voting on the resolution.

Hector Rodriguez from New Paltz suggested having a special meeting of the committee to discuss the PB/OS resolution. The special meeting will be held on March 13 at 7:00 p.m. A demonstration of both PB/OS and DRE voting machines will be held at the legislature on March 7 from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.

I am a strong proponent of PB/OS voting machines. The system that we use for voting must be reliable and inspire voter confidence in the integrity of our elections, and the technology used must be transparent. New York’s mandate for voter verified paper ballots guarantees that an election can be audited if the Board of Elections determines that an audit is necessary, and decides to undertake one. However, if Ulster County chooses a DRE system, votes will be counted in a mysterious electronic process. Computer technologists overwhelmingly agree that it is impossible to ensure that these systems are not flawed or corrupted. If the Board of Elections decides to audit a DRE process, counting all of the voter-verified ballots and reconciling the discrepancies with the electronic tally will be time-consuming and expensive.

 In addition to being the most accurate, secure, transparent and accessible voting technology available, PB/OS is also the least costly. According to New Yorkers for Verified Voting, in a voting district with three lever machines, the cost for DRE machines will be $36,000. The cost for the PB/OS machines with a ballot-marking machine will only be $10,000. PB/OS are also less costly to store, maintain, transport and most importantly to set up for each election.I look forward to having our resolution pass in our committee on March 13 and at the April meeting of the full legislature.

In other business, we set an agenda for future meetings. Brian Shapiro of Woodstock suggested breaking into working groups to study and make recommendations on several different areas of county government.

Tracey Bartels of Gardiner suggested having minutes of all committees possibly including audio recording posted on the county web site. Tracey will write this suggestion up and it will be discussed at the next meeting. Hector Rodriguez pointed out that the Efficiency and Reform committee would be very busy with work on the Charter Commission recommendations.

At the next meting on March 6, we will be discussing a fleet manager for county vehicles and form an Ethics Panel that will report to the Efficiency and Reform committee.

Freeman Story