From $3,150 each to practically worthless (FL Voting Machines)

[brooklynite]

TALLAHASSEE - For sale, incredibly cheap: 25,000 Florida touch screen voting machines, like new but rendered obsolete by a changed political climate.

The switch to paper ballots ordered by Gov. Charlie Crist and the Legislature means that most touch screens, only a few years old, must be junked and replaced by the fall of 2008 with optical scanners that read paper ballots marked by a voter's hand.

Secretary of State Kurt Browning, who's in charge of disposing of the touch screens, can't find a buyer.

That means counties such as Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas will lose tens of millions of dollars they invested in those machines.

...snip...

The decision to get rid of touch screens has happened so fast that many of those nearly-obsolete units aren't paid for yet.

http://www.sptimes.com/2007/07/12/State/From_3_150_each_to_pr.shtml

Well, you won't see New York stuck with unsellable electronic voting machines. With our disfunctional Legislature, we probably won't have our first new machines (OCR or otherwise) in place by the next Presidential election...

[sutz12]

1. Perfect consumer storm...

Sell a bunch of crap product.

Watch it screw up royally, with no consequences for the manufacturer/distributor.

Scrap them.

Sell the next round of crap equipment.

Rinse, lather, repeat.

[GreenPartyVoter]

2. They learned this trick from the DOD