Using Lever Machines in Village Election Still Possible

The Village of Mineola is in the midst of a “quandary” as Village Clerk Joe Scalero put it, due to uncertainty over whether or not they can or would have to resort to paper ballots in the upcoming March elections.

“When the state law was written, it was written to address Federal elections,” the village clerk said. “They then applied it to all elections in the state, without looking at the political subdivisions. They never considered villages, essentially.”

The new optical scan machines are not available according to Scalero because as the State amended its laws for the new scan machines, paper ballots become the automatic default when the machines are not available.

“By law, because last year was the first year using them, they have to impound them for a year,” he said. “I don’t know what was going on up in Albany last year when they passed this last year, but nobody ever said ‘hey, those machines are going to be impounded, they’re not going to be available for villages or districts’.”

A bill was introduced during the current legislative session by State , R-Mineola, and Assemblywoman Michele Schimmel, D- Great Neck, to allow the local municipalities to use the older lever machines.

“I’m still holding out every hope that we can do that because that’s an easier and far more efficient way of voting,” Scalero said, adding that if the legislation is not passed by the March 15 election day the village would have to go to paper ballots. “That means checking off or somehow filling out a paper ballot and literally putting it in a ballot box so our digital age has now taken us back to, ironically, the same method that was used following the Revolutionary War.”

In the event of that occurrence, Scalero asked for authorization from the village board at Wednesday night’s meeting at the to train the election workers on the new paper ballots since they are currently trained only on the optical scanning machines “as a contingency plan.”

If the plan were to be implemented, Scalero would bring in all the election workers prior to the election for an additional day of training. The training on the optical machines from the board of elections costs $25 per person and Scalero said he would ask for a comparable amount from the village board. It would be in addition to their pay on election day.

The Nassau County Village Officials Association (CVOA) recently met with Nassau County Executive Ed Mangano, who agreed to supply the lever machines to the local municipalities if the law did not pass and the villages were to supply the county with letters of indemnification, holding the county, the board of elections the board of election commissioners and others harmless should the election be contested. No decisions have been made to move forward from the CVOA.

“The CVOA is looking at that because they want to see basically what the legality is if you conduct an election under that waiver,does the waiver really mean anything?” Scalero said.

Under the law, paper ballots would have to be provided by the same outside company that provided them to the county for the optical scan machines and cover 110 percent of the registered voting roll, about 12,000 total. The village would have to pick up the cost.

Since villages like Mineola print their own absentee and emergency ballots each year, Scalero said the possibility of Mineola printing its own ballots is also being investigated. By Scalero’s estimates, Mineola last used paper ballots around 1945.

“The bigger problem that we face this year with the paper ballots is the mechanism for insuring (validity),” Scalero said. “There has to be a mechanism for handing you your paper ballot, insuring your privacy of that vote, and then returning that ballot to a secured box, making sure that nobody can put in extra ballots.”

The board also approved the list of election inspectors for the March 15 village election Wednesday night. The list can be changed by resolution of the board between now and the village election.