Gothamist
A non-profit newsroom, powered by WNYC.
Gothamist
Listen Live
News
Your Hot New Electronic Voting Machines: A Photo Preview
By
John Del Signore
Published Sep 14, 2010
Modified Sep 14, 2010
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
Never miss a story
Email address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .
View all 5
By
John Del Signore
Published Sep 14, 2010
Modified Sep 14, 2010
Share
FacebookTwitterRedditEmail
We rely on your support to make local news available to all
Make your contribution now and help Gothamist thrive in 2026. Donate today
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Odds are you're not bothering to vote in today's primary, so here's a taste of what awaits next time you decide to give a shit about representative democracy. Gone are the big old clunky lever machines, which always gave us the satisfying sensation of beheading our most loathed politicians. Now all voters in New York State are using paper ballots, which are then optically scanned into machines operated by Election Systems and Software [ES&S] of Omaha, Nebraska. That company's had some problems, like allocating votes cast in one race to an entirely different race that wasn’t even on the electronic ballot.
ES&S , which won the $70 million contract in January, has also been criticized for operating machines that accept incorrectly filled-out ballots, instead of spitting the ballots back out automatically and letting voters redo it. Instead, the machine will ask you whether you want to return the flawed ballot or cast your erroneous vote, which will then be rejected. The old machines physically prevented overvoting like this, and the NAACP and the Working Families Party, along with other groups, have filed a lawsuit challenging how the ES&S machines handle overvoting. "The new overvote procedure that New York has adopted on these new machines will disenfranchise minority voters and especially African-American voters at far higher rates than white voters," one attorney told the Wall Street Journal, citing voting statistics from Florida.
In our Williamsburg precinct, the Board of Elections volunteer handed us the paper ballot and told us to go "bubble" it. So we bubbled away, filling in little ovals similar to an SAT test. (Our decisions were carefully based on which bubbles would collectively make a picture of a kitty.) Then it was over to the scanner, which sucked our ballot into the matrix. Our little token ritual of participation in the political process is now in your hands, ES&S! It seemed to go pretty smoothly, but things aren't going so well for would-be voters in one Westchester suburb, where 3 of 5 new electronic voting machines were out of service when polls opened, the AP reports. NYC is the last municipality in the U.S. to adopt electronic voting machines for elections, so pour one out for analog.
Tagged
election 2010
electronic voting
es&s
primary
voting
voting machines
John Del Signore
Originally from the Albany area, John Del Signore has called NYC home since 1995. In addition to his thousands of meticulously-crafted bespoke blog posts for Gothamist, his writing has also been published in The Awl, Deadspin, The Nervous Breakdown, and performed at The Brick Theater in Brooklyn.
Read more
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
MORE news
5 men charged with trespassing in 2 Manhattan manhole cases
Two people who were found soaking wet and smelling of sewage say they went underground to look for jewelry, according to police and a criminal complaint.
By
Charles Lane
Published Oct 23, 2026 at 7:49 p.m. ET
6-year-old girl breaks leg after getting hit by falling bricks in Queens
The girl was walking with her mother in Maspeth on Thursday. The Department of Buildings cited the owner of a garage for “failure to maintain” it.
By
Charles Lane
News
6-year-old girl breaks leg after getting hit by falling bricks in Queens
The girl was walking with her mother in Maspeth on Thursday. The Department of Buildings cited the owner of a garage for “failure to maintain” it.
By
Charles Lane
Mamdani extends ban on permits for new street fairs due to NYPD overtime
By
Carol Chen
Inside the Midtown Bus Terminal rebuild: Decks over Lincoln Tunnel approach, a new park
By
Ramsey Khalifeh
Black couple seeking Queens apartment sues over racist text from broker
By
Brittany Kriegstein
Never miss a story
Catch up on the most important headlines with a roundup of essential NYC stories, delivered to your inbox daily.
Sign upEmail address
By submitting your information, you're agreeing to receive communications from New York Public Radio in accordance with our Terms .