Voters’ booths in New York City for its mayoral primary election in September are going retro.
The New York State Assembly passed a measure allowing the cit to go back to mechanical voting machines for the fall primary and run-off.
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It’s not about a lack of trust in the technology, reports the New York Times. Optical scan technology, on which the city spent $95 million, makes hand counts time-consuming and takes longer to reset than the lever-pull machines.
This becomes an issue with primary elections. If no candidate garners 40 per cent of the vote on Sept. 10, a runoff is held two weeks later. With optical scan voting machines, the city would need 60 days between votes. Critics deny that it would take that long to turn around.
No word yet about bringing back typewriters.
Read the full story in the New York Times.