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States Throw Out Electronic Voting Machines

Posted by kdawson on from the returning-to-paper dept.

Davide Marney passes along an AP story about the thousands of voting machines gathering dust in warehouses across the country after states such as California, Ohio, and Florida have banned their use. Many of these machines cost $3.5K to $5K each. Local election boards are struggling to find ways to recover any of the cost of the machines, or even to recycle them. The picture in Ohio is the most confusing, as multiple court cases limit the state's options and result in a situation in which the discredited machines will nevertheless be used in the presidential election coming up in November. The state's new (Democratic) attorney general has just issued a rule banning the practice of election workers taking the machines home with them the night before elections.

5 of 238 comments (clear)

  1. Take A Deep Breath, Everybody... by blcamp · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I don't like these machines either, and am glad they're gone.

    But before you all go out into the street to dance, let me remind everyone that those paper ballots aren't exactly hand counted... those too are counted by... say it with me: ELECTRONIC machines. They have software. They are connected to a network. They have to store their results on media at some point.

    It doesn't make one "bit" of difference whether a vote is tallied as a bit, or a missing (or hanging) chad... the integrity of an election, ANY ELECTION, is dependent SOLELY UPON the integrity of the people who carry it out.

    --
    The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
  2. Re:Does it run on lennix? by twistedsymphony · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I realize this is a joke but one has to wonder... wouldn't this be a great opportunity for the open source community to figure out how to salvage the hardware on these machines by replacing the software with something Open and less prone to errors?

    --
    Collector's Edition
  3. Re:2 ideas by tomtomtom777 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    1) Novelty themed restaurant, where you place your order by "voting".

    Slightly offtopic:

    In Amsterdam we used to have a bar called the "stock"-bar where the price of items was (inversely) determined in real time by the number of people ordering it.

    Pretty nice idea, but people ended up drinking a lot filthy "exotic" drinks. I guess that doesn't invite people to come back...

  4. Re:2004 US Presidential Election Stolen in Ohio by megamerican · · Score: 5, Interesting
    Don't forget that people went to jail for rigging the recount in Ohio. The big question is, why rig a recount if the regular count wasn't rigged in the first place?

    Another question is, why does a company who make ATM machines which don't lose a cent in millions of transactions and have a paper trail fail to do the same for voting machines?

    Don't forget this wonderful youtube clip:
    www.youtube.com/watch?v=4UvEuqYyDoE

    --
    If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
  5. Give them to the schools by WeeBit · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I think they should give them to the College students as a pet project they would earn bonus points if they can find out how fraud was carried out, along with proof. Would even be a extra grade if they can find out which state / county used that particular box too.

    I can dream damn it!