Sheldon Silver, speaker of the Assembly, recently appointed Assemblyman David S. Sidikman (D - Old Bethpage) as chairman of the Election Law Committee.

The speaker indicated that in order to avoid what transpired during the recent Presidential Election in Florida, his priority for the committee will be to hold extensive hearings throughout the state in order to improve and correct what is necessary in our own election system to see that every vote is counted and every vote counts.

There is no such thing as a federal election law as all control over election procedures, petitions, primaries, absentee ballots, machines and challenges are all state controlled. Sidikman's committee, which he is now chairman of, controls the entire election law and the process.

First on Sidikman's agenda is to hold statewide hearings to ensure that what happened in Florida never happens in New York. "From these hearings, we want to get testimony as to our present system and as to what changes various organizations would want and most likely legislation would come out of these hearings," said Sidikman. "We are going to look into how good the machines are and what changes we could make when counting absentee ballots, overseas ballots."

Sidikman welcomes the new position and looks forward to his duties. "This is the right time for me because it has been the country's focus for many months," he said. "I am very excited about dealing with the subject matter and making improvements so that everyone's vote is counted."

Many parts of the country still use paper ballots and New York's absentee and oversea ballots are still paper. "Our machines are good, but old," said Sidikman. "We want to look at the counting of those and look at our machines and see if they will last or if we need new ones. We will see if we need to switch over to electronic machines. We also want to look at and research electronic and Internet voting."

Internet voting is a new concept and there is not much known about the process at this point in time, but this is something that Sidikman wants to change. "I don't think electronic or Internet voting will be in the near future, but we are going to study it," he said, "There are companies who have the software and hardware to do this and I have met with many of them."

Sidikman understands that there are still questions of hacking, fraud and identification of the voter. "We don't want to put a system in that is going to invite any fraud or trickery or anything like that," said Sidikman. "I am very excited to be in the forefront of all of this and I am going to be a very active foreman."