Thanks to Livvy for posting this story on the Daily Thread which I encourage you to recommend. http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x500070The Cost of E-Voting
By Kim Zetter
April 04, 2008
One reason election officials around the country have given for purchasing touch-screen voting machines is that they say the systems save money -- both in the cost of printing paper ballots and in storing them after an election. Officials have made this claim, despite the fact that the machines carry a steep price tag (about $3,000 per machine).
So SaveOurVotes (.pdf), a voting integrity group in Maryland, decided to see if the 19,000 touch-screen machines their state purchased really did save money. The results aren't really a surprise -- the machines are wildly more expensive than anyone anticipated. But just how expensive they are makes their analysis mandatory reading for any legislators and state or county budget committees that approve voting equipment purchases.
Maryland uses one system statewide -- touch-screen machines made by Diebold Election Systems -- which it purchased in batches in 2002 and 2003. A loan of about $67 million was taken out from the state treasury to pay Diebold for the machines, which counties are still paying off. They'll continue to pay for the machines through 2014, even though the state has since decided to scrap the touch-screen machines, due to security concerns, and change to optical-scan machines by 2010.
Nonetheless, according to SaveOurVotes' figures, by the end of the presidential election this year, Maryland will have spent more than $97.5 million on the machines it's abandoning, but only about half of that can be attributed to the actual cost of purchasing the machines.
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http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2008/04/the-cost-of-e-v.html