For over five years, since the passage of the "Help America Vote Act" (HAVA), New York State has been behind schedule in doing anything. Today, we took a step forward.

Under a federal court ruling, the State Board of Elections (SBOE) was required to approve voting systems that would allow disabled voters to vote independently. From the list approved by the SBOE, county boards (and here the NYC Board of Elections) will pick a system. At least one disabled-accessible system must be in each polling place this fall.

Yesterday, the SBOE was supposed to meet to decide which system(s) to approve, but things didn't go smoothly. There are four Commissioners, two Democrats and two Republicans. The R's wanted to approve a machine by Liberty Voting that not only fails to meet NY state law but is also banned in Liberty's home country of The Netherlands. They refused to come into the meeting room at the start time of 11:00, and stayed out until 5:30 in the evening, at which point nothing got done.

Today, in Saratoga, the SBOE finally met and approved three systems, none of which is the Liberty system. All three involve paper ballots and optical scanners; none is a DRE.

And the winners are:

Sequoia Imagecast, Premier Automark, and the ES&S Automark. The last two will have some modifications (which were apparently requested by the R's but approved by the D's).

This is a victory for all those people who have worked for years to keep DREs out of New York. Kudos to Bo Lipari of New Yorkers for Verified Voting, Teresa Hommel of wheresthepaper.org, and other people and groups who led the fight.

Of course, we're not done. Sometime over the next year or so the SBOE will have to certify machines for permanent use, and you can bet Liberty and others will be in there fighting to make millions by selling us unreliable machines. Today, however, we can celebrate a victory for the forces of good.