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The upcoming mayoral election could become a chaotic mess where the winner isn’t known for months, Mayor Bloomberg warned yesterday.
“I think we have a potential disaster here,” the mayor declared ominously.
He was reacting to recent comments from Board of Elections officials, who are sounding the alarm bells that thousands of electronic voting machines introduced in 2010 aren’t suited for the kind of quick turnaround that will likely be required in this local election cycle.
Under state law, a runoff has to be conducted two weeks after the Sept. 10 primaries for mayor, comptroller and public advocate for each contest in which the leading candidate doesn’t get at least 40 percent of the vote.
With five serious contenders already competing in the Democratic race for mayor — and Anthony Weiner about to jump in — a run-off between the two top finishers appears likely.
No poll of the Democratic field so far has found any candidate reaching 40 percent.
Election officials say they’re worried about a runoff because of the time it takes to prepare the new electronic machines for a contest.
Among other concerns, 3 percent of all ballots cast in the primary have to be counted by hand to test the accuracy of the electronic voting scanners before the results can be made official.
“It’s a potential big issue for the board and that’s why we need help,” said Board of Elections president Fred Umane.
He said the board would be in Albany Tuesday seeking relief that might include a one-week delay in the runoff, re-introduction of the old mechanical voting machines and even the most extreme option of eliminating the runoff entirely.
Bloomberg is pushing for re-introduction of the old lever machines, which he said have the added advantage or providing real privacy in the voting booth.
“If we don’t do that, we are running a real risk of not being able to decide who is mayor for months,” he said. “Because if you can’t figure out the runoff and then it takes a while and then you have the general election, who knows what’s going to happen?”
The state Senate has passed a bill that would allow the 60-year-old mechanical machines, now sitting in warehouses, to make a comeback. But sources said the Assembly is resistant and is more intent on the giving the board an extra week to get ready for the runoff.
Neal Rosenstein, of the New York Public Interest Research Group, who has been monitoring the election process here for years, noted the irony of ancient machinery possibly being brought back to rescue supposedly advanced computers.
“Modern technology should make things easier,” he observed.
But when scanners were added to the voting process three years ago, Rosenstein said, no one thought about the time it would take to program them between elections.
“It really wasn’t part of the conversation,” he recalled.