Bayport-Blue Point School Superintendent Dr. Vincent Butera is expected to explain why the district has been using an election service that offers the opportunity for a district to collect real-time vote data during election day and potentially use it to conduct voting activity that is banned by state law.
The district has come under fire the past two days in media reports indicating it was one of several dozen New York districts paying for the service from Bold Systems, a Bellport based vendor that sells the computer-based election and voting software called Election Management System (EMS) through Eastern Suffolk BOCES.
An add-on feature to EMS is the “Parent, Staff & Student” Project (called PSK) that allows districts to identify vote data points, such as who is not registered yet to vote, to generating call lists to boost voter turnout on the election day. The voting data can even separated into call lists of key community interest group lists, such as those who publicly support sports.
The B-BP district did not respond to Patch’s inquiry on Monday, and follow-up inquiry on Tuesday, regarding the service and its use by the district.
According to an email from a district spokesperson late Tuesday afternoon, Butera will discuss the use of the service at the BOE’s monthly work session meeting tonight at 7 p.m. in the high school cafeteria.
Unlike regular board meetings, public comment is not part of a work session agenda unless the board allows it during the meeting.
Butera was quoted in a Newsday article Tuesday that the district only used the Bold Systems data for analysis needs and not any sort of electioneering efforts.
The Newsday article reports state education officials are investigating whether the more than 60 Long Island school districts using the service used the PKS module.
According to one published report Bold Systems advertised its service as having the ability to maximize a ‘yes’ vote during elections, which is a banned activity for school districts, and analyze data to determine if certain community demographics were responsible for a vote result.
Such data could also be used to call voters, or certain segments of the voting population, to remind them to vote and that could potentially engineer the vote outcome, according to Bayport resident Noel Feustell.
Fuestel first brought up the use of the software at the B-BP board’s last regular meeting. He then filed Freedom of Information requests with BOCES to get details on how long the district has contracted for the service.
According to documents provided to Patch from Feustel the B-BP district has been using the service and PSK since 2008, with the cost averaging about $12,000 a year, including a fee of approximately $730 for the PSK feature.
The Sayville School District also employs the Bold Systems service. Superintendent Dr. Walter Schartner responded immediately to Patch’s requests on Monday regarding the service and its use by the school district.
“We have used the software in excess of nine years,” stated Schartner in an email to Patch. “We went to the software to keep electronic records rather than paper records. We have never used any calling features or shared any voting information during a vote.”
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