The New York City Board of Elections (BOE) will display five new voting systems at Fordham onThursday, Jan. 11, from 5 to 9 p.m. at the Pope Auditorium on the Lincoln Center campus, as part of a citywide demonstration of proposed replacement voting machines.
The machine models on display include touch screen, ballot-marking and optical scan devices, and are manufactured by Avante, Election Systems & Software, Diebold, and Sequoia Voting Systems. Once a vending contractor is chosen, New York City’s century-old lever voting machines, colloquially referred to as “900-pound gorillas,” are scheduled to begin being replaced by the time of the upcoming federal elections in 2008.
“The federal government is offering money to transform election machinery in all of the states,” said Joseph P. Muriana, Esq., associate vice president for government and urban affairs. “Both the public and the entire Fordham community are invited to come out and try these machines, and then comment on which they prefer that evening.”
Each vendor will conduct a half-hour presentation and make two machines available – one for a formal presentation and another for public testing. One more public demonstration is scheduled for Jan. 22 in Brooklyn at Medgar Evers College. Public hearings on the machines will be held Jan. 23 at the BOE offices at 42 Broadway.
The event is being sponsored by the Office of Government and Urban Affairs.
– Janet Sassi
