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Is there a voting fiasco in Connecticut's future?

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Is there a voting fiasco in Connecticut’s future?

The chances that our state will have the voting problems on the scale of Florida in the 2000 elections or Ohio in the 2004 elections are not great. However, a ruling by a federal commission last week that all of Connecticut’s lever-style voting machines will have to be replaced by January 1, 2006, in order for the state to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act (HAVA) significantly increases the likelihood that there will confusion and frustration awaiting voters at the polls next year.

Secretary of the State Susan Bysiewicz, a Democratic candidate for governor with electoral aspirations of her own for 2006, announced last week that the US Election Assistance Commission had concluded that mechanical machines like those used in Connecticut are not accessible to all voters and therefore should be used by no voters. Connecticut had planned to use a $32.7 million federal grant to help with HAVA implementation by providing one fully accessible electronic machine for every polling place in the state. This strategy was designed to address the accessibility issue and buy the state more time to sort through the various competing voting technologies to eventually replace the lever machines, which are old, increasingly prone to breakdowns, and no longer manufactured. That plan has now been completely undermined with less than four months to go before the federal deadline for compliance.

Mrs Bysiewicz and state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal planned a joint news conference for Thursday this week, after The Bee goes to press, to address possible options for the state at this point, including an appeal of the decision to the US Department of Justice, which has the final word on the immediate fate of the remaining lever-style voting machines in Connecticut and other states.

The Help Americans Vote Act was signed into law three years ago, and now, with just four months before the deadline, a federal commission has effectively rejected the state’s plan for compliance. The result is likely to be a quick and probably ill-considered decision on whether to require towns to purchase direct recording electronic (touch screen) machines or optical scanning machines for ballots filled out by hand. The wrong decision could create problems for the ease, accountability, and expense of local elections for years to come. Because an Election Assistance Commission is providing more confusion than assistance, the act intended to help Americans vote may do just the opposite.

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