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(s)Elections See other (s)Elections Articles Title: STATES THROW OUT COSTLY ELECTRONIC VOTING MACHINES The demise of touch-screen voting has produced a graveyard of expensive corpses: Warehouses stacked with thousands of carefully wrapped voting machines that have been shelved because of doubts about vanishing votes and vulnerability to hackers. What to do with this high-tech junkyard is a multimillion-dollar question. One manufacturer offered $1 a piece to take back its ATM-like machines. Some states are offering the devices for sale on eBay and craigslist. Others hope to sell their inventories to Third-World countries or salvage them for scrap. A few more are holding out hope that the machines, some of which were purchased for as much as $5,000, could one day be resurrected. "We store them very, very carefully in the hopes that someone, someday may decide that we can use them again," said San Diego County Registrar Deborah Seiler, whose jurisdiction spent $25 million on the devices. It wasn't supposed to be this way. After the disputed 2000 presidential recount, Congress provided more than $3 billion to replace punch card and lever-operated machines. State officials across the country said the new systems would eliminate human error and political tampering. But problems with the machines soon followed: vanishing votes, breakdowns, malfunctions and increasing evidence that the devices were vulnerable to hackers. Beginning last year, states including California, Ohio and Florida abruptly ordered election officials to mothball their electronic machines. Over the last two years, the percentage of registered voters relying on touch-screen technology dropped from 44 percent to 36 percent. In November, when the presidential race between Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain ends, an estimated 57 percent of voters will rely on paper ballots. But reverting to paper has caused its own problems. During this year's primary season, record numbers of voters showed up. That caused ballots to run out, which delayed the often-cumbersome task of feeding paper ballots into scanning machines. Changing to paper also meant that local election districts had to spend extra money on printing costs. November's general election could bring more of the same difficulties. As of December, 30 states had spent more than $253 million on new voting systems, according to a report by the Election Assistance Commission, the federal agency that oversees spending of the $3 billion federal allotment. But the agency does not know how many election districts have since abandoned those newly purchased systems. "You'd have to talk to every one of the 10,072 election jurisdictions across the country," said Kimball Brace of Election Data Services, which tracks voting systems. "After 2000, everyone thought you could throw a bunch of money at the problem and make it go away right away. Elections ain't that kind of thing." San Diego's Seiler said she was forced to shrink-wrap 10,200 machines after Secretary of State Debra Bowen banned the devices, saying they were susceptible to fraud. Seiler disagreed. Like many local election officials, she likes the system just fine. She also is a former employee of the system's manufacturer. "There has been no evidence of any tampering on these machines," she said. "It was all based on a probability." Leading makers of voting machines have made similar statements and blame poorly trained poll workers and human error for most glitches. Unlike most of her colleagues, Seiler does not have to spend any of her budget on printing paper ballots. The county's vendor - Premier Elections Solutions Inc., which changed its name from Diebold Election Systems following years of controversy over the reliability of its machines - bears those extra costs. "I think we're the only county in the country that has that contract stipulation," Seiler said. Kari Verjil, elections director for sprawling San Bernardino County, north of San Diego, is not so lucky. "We're paying for the printed ballots," she said. "It's coming out of my budget." In 2006, using electronic machines, the statewide primary cost her county $2.5 million. In 2008, using paper ballots cost $3.4 million. "I have a huge inventory of machines that I am not able to use," she complained. "They are just sitting in our warehouse basically useless." Stacked to floor to ceiling are 4,000 machines purchased at $3,500 each. Total cost of that system: $16 million. What will she do with them? "It's a little difficult," she replied. "Who wants to buy a system that has been decertified? Especially when other states are following suit?" Five months ago, Florida began unloading nearly 30,000 touch-screen machines to a recycling company, which will strip, crush or try to sell the devices to other countries and states. The recycling company earns part of all sales. Ohio can't do anything about selling its $138 system until lawsuits filed by the manufacturer and the secretary of state get sorted out. The legal battle follows a string of problems dating to 2004, when malfunctioning machines led to hours-long lines at the polls. Days passed before votes were tallied. Company management claims that election problems were caused by human error and complications from an antivirus software system. And so in November, most of the state will still be using e-voting machines. Does anyone wonder why there has NOT BEEN a clampdown on these turkeys? Over 10,000 machines just in San Diego County, Californicate, spent $25 MILLION DOLLARS for these pieces of crap. Suppose that only $10 per machine exchanged hands--say to the hands of some politican who just happened to sit on a committee charged with oversight of Elections--that would be over $100,000 received just for San Diego County alone! But we could be generous and say the kickback was only $1 per machine......how many counties are there in the us of a? And some machines cost upwards of $5,000 each? And goodness knows--the lil ol registrar of San Diego County doesn't have a problem--not one--with these machines--but then, why should she when she worked for the supplier in a previous life!!!!! Gimme a break.........we need to get back to paper ballots and hand counting....screw the instant 'need to know' routine that has brought us to this brink of disaster.
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#1. To: rowdee (#0)
Amen... Here in the hills we are so far behind times, we never used anything but paper. Course, guess they figured us bitter small town folk not smart nuff to use a machine.
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I most always vote absentee ballot; that way I know I am doing paper; and they have to be hand processed. :) Now, with my elderly father gone, I've got to come up with a fresh excuse for needing to vote absentee....I can't out and out lie; so maybe if I said I was going to go out of town election day, and then drove out to say, Baker, or Tendoy, and then came home, I wouldn't exactly be lying. I'll have to see if my conscience can handle that.
Yes you can. I do. Same reason, they must count my vote.
Technically, I could lie, Cyni.......but my conscience would bother me. I detest liars. My kid brother was a better one than the last two liar in chiefs and I despised it so much growing up with it. Didn't tolerate it with my girls, and I have to lead by example......and my conscience. Nibble, nibble, nibble. :( But I shall find a way...trust me.
I never did understand the call to use those machines. During the contentious 2000 elections, error rates were higher in places using those machines.
Conscience. I am olde and it is tiring to stand in line to do a two minute chore. These olde bones tell me go ahead forget conscience, do it at home and we feel better.
But you understand now, doncha ya--even though it is after the fact.
I do want to do it at home. :)
Well I meant I didn't understand the call for them by the general public. Maybe it was the media playing their part trying to convince us this is what the public wanted. We know why the politicians wanted it. They were constantly having to go put new memory cards in the machines mid vote. Gee, I wonder why? Not.
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