Voters Encounter Scattered Problems

New Yorkers using the new computerized voting system on Tuesday seemed to encounter fewer problems than they did during the September primary, when Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg complained of “a royal screw-up.”

There were scattered reports of ballots jamming and machines malfunctioning, two big headaches during the primary.

Mr. Bloomberg cast his ballot just after 7 a.m. at a school on East 81st Street. “The process, in all fairness,” he said, “was different, smooth,” compared with what happened on primary day.

A spokeswoman for the city’s Board of Elections said Tuesday morning that she did not yet “have reports on poll site opening issues.” A monitoring center set up by Election Protection, a nonpartisan election watchdog group, received calls of at least two sites that opened 15 to 20 minutes late, a far cry from the dozens of polling sites that opened hours late during the September primary.

Neal Rosenstein, an election expert with the New York Public Interest Research Group, said the early reports were little more than “the normal Election Day problems which voters have.”

“There’s no surprise with a new voting system that there would be glitches and a learning curve for voters and poll workers alike,” Mr. Rosenstein said, “but I’m not hearing of the large-scale, widespread problems with opening the polls or jammed scanners that we had in the primary.”

“The board seems to have learned its lesson,” he added, referring to the Board of Elections.

Officials at the elections board had said they worked to avoid a repeat of the problems that made the primary a study in confusion. Last week the board announced the firing of its executive director, George Gonzalez, a longtime Democratic loyalist from the Bronx who had held the board’s top job for only three months.

As Election Day began, election monitors took their places at polling sites across the city, watching and hoping to minimize malfunctions. Phone lines were set up to answer questions about the new electronic voting system.

Voting in some polling places was slow. At Goddard Riverside Community Center on the Upper West Side, a line of more than 40 voters — many of them confused about where to go and what to do — snaked through several cramped rooms about 10:30 a.m. Poll workers said the crowds had not let up since the doors opened at 6.

“This is scandalous — I’ve never seen lines this long,” said Susan J. Gwertzman, who was working as a door clerk, trying to direct new arrivals and deal with frustrated voters.

The problem, Ms. Gwertzman explained to all who would listen, was that the polling place had received three scanning machines, just as many as it had received for the September primary, when delays and disarray around the city embarrassed the Board of Elections. But this time, two of the machines were not working, she said.

At Public School 29 in Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, only one of three scanners was working, and some voters grumbled that the poll workers did not know how to operate it. At the School for Global Studies, on Baltic Street in Carroll Gardens, Brooklyn, only one scanner booted up at the beginning of the day.

“I have four other scanners, so it’s not an emergency,” said Michaela Mihaescu, the polling coordinator.

In some polling places, election workers opened the wrong ballots and had to find the right ones. And the Web site of the New York State Board of Elections was briefly unavailable around 7:30 a.m., though it was quickly restored.

Some voters were confused by having to mark ballots instead of pull levers, as they were accustomed to doing on Election Day. Daniel Tito, voting at Public School 212, at 34-25 82nd Street in Jackson Heights, Queens, was surprised when the scanner rejected his ballot.

“I didn’t realize I had to fill in the circles,” Mr. Tito said. “I just put a dot.” He was given another ballot, and carefully darkened the little circles. “It wasn’t a big deal,” he said.

Some voters complained that they did not know there were questions on the flip side of the paper ballot. “Too late now,” the police officer assigned to at a precinct on the Upper West Side told a woman who had just cast her ballot — and heard another voter talking about having to turn the ballot over.

Others said the Board of Elections needed graphic design help — the layout of the ballot was confusing and the typeface too small, they said. “I had to take my glasses off,” said Robert Berne, who voted on the Upper West Side. “The ballot is basically unreadable.”

Mr. Rosenstein of the New York Public Interest Research Group said that some voters longed for the voting machines that the new system replaced.

“There’s a sense of nostalgia from voters who miss that rush of adrenaline one gets when pulling that lever and hearing all of the gears grinding and the clicker advancing and knowing your vote is being cast,” he said. “But a lot of voters are impressed with how smooth the process was.”

(source:nytimes.com)