Anxiety over new voting machines

Less than a month before primary day, election officials around the region are expressing anxiety about the full statewide replacement of low-tech lever voting machines this year with new electronic-scanning devices.

Douglas Kellner, a Democratic member of the state Board of Elections, said if training of inspectors comes off less than perfectly, "there might be glitches." Others agreed that mastery by those hired to work the polling places will prove key as many voters mark paper ballots SAT-style for the first time and place them in tabulators. Since all political parties have primaries Sept. 14 - in a year with a crowded ballot - poll workers can forget about having a "slow day" as rehearsal for the Nov. 2 general election. Other officials said they expect problems.

TACTICS: Republican strategies in national and New York legislative races share a theme: President Barack Obama. National operatives are targeting districts where Democrats won congressional seats but where John McCain drew more votes for president. In the New York State Senate, the Obama factor is more oblique; the GOP counts on Democratic voters turning out in much lower numbers than in 2008, when they unseated veteran Republicans Cesar Trunzo of Brentwood and Serphin Maltese of Middle Village, changing majorities in the house.

HIS VIEW: Ira Bernstein's name doesn't make strategists' shortlists of targeted races. But in challenging state Sen. John Flanagan (R-East Northport) in the 2nd Senate District, he's disputing the sentiment that teachers' unions need reining in. A former teacher in the Commack school district, Bernstein says Wall Street profits should be targeted for revenues and he warily eyes charter-school expansion. Flanagan has publicly defended his actions on education.

POLITICS ASIDE: Though focused on his governance, "The Man Who Saved New York: Hugh Carey and the Great Fiscal Crisis of 1975," by ex-Sen. Seymour P. Lachman and ex-Newsday reporter Robert Polner, describes the former governor's personal tragedies. In one, Carey's longtime friend and aide Tom Regan recalls the 1969 death of two of the then-Congressman's sons Hugh Jr. and Peter, along with a friend, in an auto accident on Shelter Island. Hugh Carey is 91.