Seeking to end years of delays and controversy, Nassau and Suffolk election boards have picked Sequoia Voting Systems machines - the only mechanism certified by the state and not the subject of litigation - as their voting machine of the future.
The boards voted late Friday to buy handicapped-accessible ballot-marking devices, the first part of what will be an optical-scan system favored by most good government groups, at a cost of about $10 million that is federally funded.
Nassau will order 450 machines and Suffolk 400 - enough to have one handicapped-accessible unit in each polling place this fall. The units will have optical scanning and will only need to add software to record and track votes in compliance with the federal Help America Vote Act.
State election officials last month certified three machines, but later withdrew their support for two - those by ESystems & Software Automark, and Premier Elections Solutions. That prompted lawsuits between those companies and the state, as well as from another firm that did not qualify, Liberty Election Systems.
Rick Brand