Delay in Upgrading Voting Machines May Cost NY $5M

New York, NY —

The Bloomberg administration is lashing out at Albany for the slow pace of upgrading voting machines. WNYC's Fred Mogul has more.

REPORTER: State legislators spent more than two years figuring out how to replace old lever-based voting booths with electronic machines. In July, they decided not to decide - and left it up to counties to choose their own units, from a pre-approved list. In testimony a city council committee hearing and in a letter to Albany yesterday, the city's legal office says the state Board of Elections has made no progress since then.

GOLOMB: Here we are 4 months since the governor signed that piece of leg, and we still don't have that list together.

REPORTER: The attorney for the state election board says it still needs to elicit public comment and that drafting the regulations has taken time. He says the list should be available in the first quarter of next year. New York could lose up to 50 million dollars if at least some of the new voting machines are not in place by next fall. For WNYC, I'm Fred Mogul.