Election '09: Ballot scanners raise privacy issues

ALBANY -- Change isn't always easy, and that came through this week in the comments of voters who marked paper ballots and scanned them into machines, rather than the old-fashioned way of pulling mechanical levers, election officials said.

A number of voters said they didn't have enough privacy, and the areas where they filled out ballots weren't the right size or were in the wrong place.

In Schuyler County, one of the 17 scanners the Board of Elections used failed, said Joseph Fazzary, Republican elections commissioner. It shut down and could not be restarted. The board sent extra people to the poll site to count ballots, he said.

Conklin said about 4,000 scanning units were in use on Election Day. The state has heard there were problems with 29 of them, including the one in Schuyler County, he said.

In Schuyler and Putnam counties, a number of voters complained that the type size on the ballot was too small, election commissioners said.

The type size is a legitimate issue, Conklin said. There have been suggestions that counties might want to make magnifying glasses available at poll sites, he said.

By Cara Matthews •clmatthe@gannett.com • November 4, 2009, 9:50 pm