The Nassau County Board of Elections will receive $2 million in state aid to transition from lever-operated voting machines to optical scanners next year, state lawmakers said.
Nassau County was the only county in the state to receive the aid, state Assemblywoman Michelle Schimel (D-Great Neck) said. Villages have traditionally used lever machines for elections, but such technology will be banned in 2016.
Schimel said the county needed the aid to help offset the costs of making the permanent switch.
“We are a big county with a big population,” she said. “We need more resources to get more machines.”
Schimel, state Sen. Jack Martins (R-Mineola) and the Nassau County Board of Elections met with village and school officials last week to discuss the transition.
Schimel said that the transition will cause some complaints but added that meetings taking place now will help better prepare special districts for their elections, which take place in December.
The state aid was necessary as the districts are constrained by the tax cap to raise the revenue needed to buy the machines, Schimel said.
“My job is to make sure that my county and my district would not be unduly burdened with the finances concerned with this transition,” she said.
According to a 2014 report from the state Board of Elections, the transition to optical scanners increases election costs by 23 percent for local districts.
A recent Board of Elections mailing obtained by Newsday indicated that optical scanning machines cost $300, twice as much as the soon-to-be banned lever machines.
The only alternative would be paper ballots, which Martins has said are obsolete.
Schimel contends that she and Martins are being proactive with their implementation of optical scanning machines.
“I think Nassau is going to be a model on how to run special districts,” Schimel said. “We’re ahead of everyone in the state.”
