Madness of the machines

T

he city’s not-so-new electronic vote scanners are forcing a wholesale revamp of the way New Yorkers will choose their next mayor. This is nuts.

Imposed on the state and the city by Congress, the machines have become more trouble than they are worth.

They have delayed the reporting of unofficial results on Election Night.

They have lengthened vote counting in tight races by days, if not weeks.

And now, they are driving the Board of Elections to seek to reschedule the 2013 Democratic primary that will likely decide the next occupant of City Hall.

Since 1974, the law has scheduled the primary for early in September. If no candidate gets more than 40% of the vote, the top two finishers compete two weeks later in a runoff. On the table is a proposal to move the vote to June, cutting three critical months off the campaign season and forcing candidates to radically alter their plans.

The computerized machines, which read paper ballots, are far less nimble than their metal lever-pull dinosaur predecessors. According to the board, their time-consuming requirements rule out holding a runoff two weeks after the primary.

It takes three days to return 3,689 scanners from 1,256 poll sites to warehouses.

Add two days to check them over, and four or five days to empty the used voting materials, and four or five days to test and calibrate the machines for the next round.

And none of that counts the minimum of 10 days that it takes to get final results in the event candidates are bunched within a percentage point or two.

Mayor Bloomberg doesn’t buy that the board cannot do better.

Although he’s likely wrong, the ultimate arbiters — Gov. Cuomo and the Legislature — must determine what’s feasible and get moving immediately on setting the election calendar. Albany appears to have four alternatives: l Document that Bloomberg is right and force the board to hold the primary in September;

l Move the primary to June, with a runoff slated for August or September;

l Abolish the runoff requirement — a highly questionable move given that a candidate could win the mayoralty with, say, one-third of the vote.

l Establish an instant runoff system, where voters would rank their choices and a winner would be decided, if need be, from first- and second-place votes.

A June election, as we now have under court order for congressional primaries, would allow absentee and overseas military voters to participate. That may be the easy way out, but sticking with September, if at all possible, would be far better.