Voters around New York State stepped into the brave new world of electronic voting machines in Tuesday’s primary elections amid complaints around the city of longer-than-usual delays and troubles with the scanners that are supposed to swallow and tabulate the new, SAT-style ballots.
Even at polling places where the new machines seemed to operate correctly, it was slow going. At Public School 165, on 109th Street between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue, 80 people waited in a long line, waiting to feed the ballots they had filled out into the machine. At least one frustrated voter tried to bail out and throw his ballot in a wastebasket, though an election worker told him not to — it was against the rules.