AUBURN -- Cayuga County will be moving ahead with optical scanner voting machines in September, despite a movement among other counties in the state to retain lever machines. Cherl Heary, Republican Party chair and a Cayuga County Board of Elections commissioner, said e-mails were sent to county commissioners by the Election Protection Coalition on behalf of other counties urging Cayuga County to support the retention of lever machines.

The New York State Board of Elections is going to include Cayuga County in its pilot program. The county said "yes" to retrofitting the new machines throughout the whole county.

"Where were they seven years ago?" Heary asked. "Where were they when we bought the new machines?"

Heary said these counties are now finding out that it will cost them thousands of dollars each time they hold elections to have the results processed, so they are digging in their heels.

Notable holdouts are the five boroughs of New York City, and Nassau, Suffolk, Westchester and Rockland counties in downstate. Other counties not participating in optical scanning include Clinton, Columbia, Essex, Washington and Warren.

Cayuga County will not have to pay because it has its own software. Both commissioners, Heary and Kate Lacey, of Democratic Party chair, agreed the county would be crazy to get involved in a lawsuit, Heary said.

Sequoia, the manufacturer, will pick up machines already in place next week to add a counter to the scanning process so the machine will automatically copy and count votes instead of the hand-scoring method now in place.

Heary said the state was eager to initiate the pilot program to appease the federal government, to avoid a possible law suit for being behind in meeting a federal court order to have at least one machine in place in every polling location by the fall 2008. Much of the burden for that implementation fell on individual counties.

In Cayuga County, the new Sequoia-Dominion Optical Scanner was chosen to comply with the 2002 Help America Vote Act, to ensure individuals with disabilities access to a private voting booth. New York was the last state to comply with the legislation.

The old machines were not voter-friendly, disenfranchising handicapped voters. Some people couldn't use them without assistance.

Optical scanner machines were not in full effect for the presidential election, but people could use them if they wished. Only the ballot marking device was used, not the scanner.

In other news:

* The committee authorized the Information Technology Department to renew Cisco Maintenance agreements for county networks and a maintenance agreement for the county spam filter.

* The committee examined three naming policies, favoring Tompkins County's but will wait to come up with one tailored to Cayuga County.