LOHR McKINSTRY

and DENISE RAYMO

PLATTSBURGH -- North Country voters will be casting their votes on new machines in November, ending the era of the clunky old lever machines.

Clinton, Essex and Franklin counties all chose new machines by Friday's deadline, as mandated by federal laws.

Each county chose the Image Cast optical-scan unit from Sequoia Voting Systems.

The Sequoia machine has a paper ballot that asks voters to fill in the ovals for their candidate then feed the document into the machine, which verifies that the person filled out the ballot correctly before it is officially recorded.

If a mistake is made, the voided ballot is shunted to a locked box, and a fresh ballot is given to the voter to fill out.

"Every ballot must be accounted for," said Franklin County Republican Elections Commissioner Veronica King said.

The Sequoia machine was chosen over all-electronic versions. The fear among elections commissioners about electronic machines was that data could be wiped out completely, with no paper trail if a problem arose.

Essex County Republican Elections Commissioner Lewis Sanders had recommended different machines from Liberty, but a deal was brokered between him and Democratic Commissioner David Mace by County Attorney Daniel Manning III.

Clinton County is purchasing 45 new Sequoia machines, Franklin County is buying 32, and Essex County is getting 30.

The cost is being covered by federal funds.

The new machines will replace the mechanical-lever voting machines that have been in use since the 1930s.

The change was mandated by the federal Help America Vote Act, which was approved after the debacle of the 2000 presidential election in Florida.

Election officials in Florida had major problems counting ballots after that election, and the U.S. Supreme Court ultimately had to decide who won the presidency.