Will New Voting Machines Oversimplify New York Ballots?

The commission will have final say on how many questions voters will be deciding on come Nov. 2, and a draft proposal provided to The Wall Street Journal reveals that the commission is planning to bundle all the issues into two yes or no questions.

According to the draft, the first question will ask voters to decide on whether elected city officials should be eligible for two or three terms of office; the second will ask them to decide on everything else, including campaign eligibility requirements, conflicts of interest, zoning procedures and more.

Officials said the new electronic voting machines limit the number of questions they can fit on the ballot. The voting machines with the big red levers that have been part of civic life in New York for the better part of the last half-century have been retired. Under the new system, voters get paper ballots and pens to color in ovals to mark their choices, reminiscent of college entrance tests. Voters will then feed their ballots into a scanner that records their votes.

The commission is trying to fit all of the ballot questions on the back side of the ballot, but even with just two questions, commissioners expect the font size to be very small.

Here's the actual language of the questions that will be debated at Baruch College:

City Question 1. Term Limits:

Shall the City Charter be amended to reduce from three to two the maximum number of consecutive full terms that can be served by elected city officials who are first elected after the 2010 general election, and to prohibit the City Council from changing the maximum number of terms that a person holding an elective city office at the time that the Council acts can serve in that office?

City Question 2. Elections and Government Administration:

The proposal would amend the City Charter to:

·Disclosure of Independent Campaign Spending: Require public disclosure of expenditures made by entities and individuals independent from candidates to influence the outcome of a city election or referendum;

· Ballot Access: Generally reduce the number of petition signatures needed by candidates for city elective office to appear on a ballot;

·Voter Assistance and Campaign Finance Board: Merge voter assistance functions, including a reconstituted Voter Assistance Advisory Committee, into the Campaign Finance Board, and change when Campaign Finance Board member terms begin;

·Conflicts of Interest Law: Require all public servants to receive conflicts of interest training, raise the maximum fine for a public servant who violates the City's conflicts of interest law, and allow the City to recover any benefits obtained from such violations;

·City Administrative Tribunals: Authorize the Mayor to direct the merger of administrative tribunals and adjudications into the Office of Administrative Trials and Hearings and permit the Department of Consumer Affairs to adjudicate all violations issued by that department;

·City Reporting Requirements and Advisory Bodies: Create a commission to review requirements for reports and advisory bodies and waive the requirements, subject to City Council review, where the commission finds they are not of continuing value; and

· Map for Facility Siting: Include in the City's facilities siting map those transportation and waste management facilities operated by or for governmental entities, or by private entities that provide comparable services.

Shall this proposal be adopted?

Valerie Vazquez, a spokeswoman for the city Board of Elections, said the board has not specified precisely how many questions the commission can place on the ballot. But she acknowledged there have been discussions about the difficulty of including several separate questions. (When asked why the city couldn't add another sheet to the ballot, The Journal was referred to the board's lawyer, who has not returned calls.)

"The discussion with the Mayor's representatives and the staff of the charter committee related to the size of the print of the ballot questions," she said. "That issue will be dependent on the length of the question or questions submitted by the City Clerk to the board and the available space on the reverse side of the ballot."

If the draft proposal is approved, voters wouldn't be able to make individual decisions on the various items in the two questions.

Hope Cohen, a member of the commission, said she is disappointed so many issues are being bundled together.

"When you get 10 different subjects bundled together, there is a good possibility that you will like various items and not like various items," she said. "It's unfortunate."

Will New Voting Machines Oversimplify New York Ballots?