Schools

Superintendent Addresses Voter Manipulation Concerns

The Hauppauge District is one of more than 100 NYS schools to use the recently criticized Bold system.

Hauppauge’s School Superintendent assured residents at a board of education meeting tuesday that the district has not been using an illegal application on its voter software that is capable of influencing voter turnout in budget elections.  

Concerns rose when recent reports questioned the use of the Bold Election Management System, which is used by more than 100 school districts in New York, including Hauppauge.  

Superintendent Patricia Sullivan-Kriss explained that the district purchased the Bold software in 1994 for the use of business, records management, personnel and automation voting. However, after it was purchased a new feature was added, in which, school districts could not only see how many people had voted, but who the voters were in real time. If the odds were not in the favor of the school district, it would give an opportunity for school officials to make the phone calls they needed to get certain people down to cast their vote.  

"If your budget votes are too close to call, EMS can provide the edge you need," reads the description of the application.

Sullivan-Kriss said that it was very troubling to recently learn of the feature and explained that the school district has never used the product for purpose of voter manipulation.  

“The bold system, when we purchased it, never had an advertisement that it could be used to target voters. Nor did other districts ever purchase it that way, because to target voters in a school district election or budget vote is blatantly illegal. We can’t do that.”  

The software was purchased by each district through the Board of Cooperative Educational Services (BOCES). Attorneys for BOCES announced that they have asked the Bold Systems to remove the advertisement and deactivate the application that could violate state law.  

“I assure the community that we don’t monitor who has voted. We know how many voted throughout the day from the counters on the machines, but we don’t know who. That’s blatently illegal to do,” Sullivan-Kriss said.  

The Hauppauge School budget vote will take place May 21. In addition to voting on the budget, residents will also vote on the capital projects, as well elect three individuals to the school board.


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