Slashdot Mirror
Florida Literally Scraps Touch-Screen Voting
Kaseijin writes "Florida Governor Charlie Crist is getting his wish. The New York Times reports the state will replace touch-screen voting machines with optical-scan models by July 1, 2008 — the most aggressive timetable of any jurisdiciton rethinking this approach to voting. The touch-screen machines most likely will be sold to other jurisdictions or stripped for parts."
I bet the touch screens could be disconnected and used for other purposes.
If they put them on ebay I bet hackers and geeks would swarm the auctions. A cheap (depending on what they want for it) VGA touch screen, small PC that you might be able to install a different OS to?
Sadly though, those $5000 machines will probably only sell for $200 tops online.
Funny, my interest did the exact opposite after reading the following:
:-)
"Proprietary firmware on closed system prevents hacker access"
Hm.. Were have I heard that one before?
Baboons are cute.
If there are multiple referendums or positions to be voted for, just use colour-coded ballots and ballot boxes.
How many do you propose. In my county in November 2004, I voted for 54 different things. (President, Congress, Ohio House, Ohio Senate, State board of education, a bunch of judges, a bunch of county executive offices, several county tax authorizations and a lot of municipal tax authorizations.)
Admittedly, that was particularly severe, even for a presidential election.
I've been a pollworker for several years now, and while I have never worked a paper only election, I've got an idea of what is required as part of the counting process and it's heinous for a big election.