This article says New York state is behind schedule in choosing new vote-counting equipment to replace its mechanical voting machines. New York state is the only state that still uses these machines. The state is in violation of federal law. The machines have only nine columns (or nine rows, depending on which style is in use). Because New York state uses the party-column (or party-row) ballot format, this forces the state to put two parties in the same column (or row). In November 2008, the state squeezed Ralph Nader’s Populist Party, and the Libertarian Party, into the same column, making it relatively difficult for voters to find either one.