Political foes band together to boost ballot counts

What an oddity. The advent of New York's new 21st-century ballot system revives a practical problem right out of the 19th century.

Because of it, minor parties that on most days behave like fierce political foes joined forces last week to sue the state Board of Elections, which consists of four major-party appointees.

To explain:

On Election Day, Nov. 2, voters will mark spaces on paper ballots for their preferred candidates - just as many did for the first time in last week's primaries. Once again, they'll place those ballots in electronic scanners. Once again, anyone who "over votes" - wrongly fills in spaces for opposing candidates - will get a red alert from the scanner. And once again, such voters will get the chance to destroy that ballot and fill out another one correctly.

But this first general election under the new system poses a twist for any voters who mark multiple spaces for a candidate running on more than one line.

Before this year, and for as long as anyone could remember, the old lever voting machines would mechanically prevent you from choosing Candidate A on both the X and Y party lines. For the machine to function, you'd have to vote for your candidate A on either X or Y - or leave that race blank.

This year, however, the electronic scanner will accept such a vote - and count it once for the candidate, election officials say. But the question then becomes on which party line that vote will be tallied.

The answer makes little practical difference to the voter or candidate. In a governor's race, however, it matters big-time to the parties.

That's because the Working Families, Conservative, Independence organizations - like any party - must draw at least 50,000 votes for governor to be guaranteed an automatic ballot spot for the next four years. According to election officials, a state law enacted in 1898 - when all ballots were paper - prevails. It says multiple votes marked on a ballot for a single candidate must count in the bigger party's total. In fact, absentee ballots, always on paper, have been counted this way all along, the officials say.

So in federal court, the strangest of bedfellows become co-plaintiffs - the Conservative and Working Families parties. They want the new scanners to be reprogrammed to treat such ballots like those with "over votes." That way, they at least get a chance that voter will help add to their do-or-die totals - even if the numbers ultimately at stake prove small.