Voting Machines Giving Florida New Headache

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: New York Times, Page One

....Across the nation, jurisdictions that experimented with touch-screen voting after 2000 are starting to scale back or abandon it based on a growing perception that the machines are unreliable and concern that they do not provide a paper trail in case questions arise. California will sharply scale back touch-screen voting next year after a review by the secretary of state found it was vulnerable to hackers.

Florida is the biggest state to reject touch screens so sweepingly, and its deadline for removing them, July 1, 2008, is the most imminent. For the 15 counties that must dump their expensive systems, buy new optical-scan machines and retrain thousands of poll workers, hurdles abound....

Six counties still owe a combined $33 million on their touch-screen machines, which most bought hurriedly to comply with a new federal law banning punch-card and lever voting systems after the recount. Miami-Dade County alone must cast aside 7,200 touch-screen machines, for which it paid $24.5 million and still owes $15 million....

***

Under the state’s new election law, disabled voters can keep voting by touch screen — akin to using an A.T.M. — until 2012. But everyone else will use them only twice more, for the presidential primaries on Jan. 29 and municipal elections next spring. With optical scanning, voters use pens to mark paper ballots that are then read by scanning machines, leaving a paper record for recounts.

The only county that has already switched is Sarasota, where voters last year approved a charter amendment requiring a paper-ballot system. More than 18,000 votes cast on touch-screen machines were not recorded in a close Congressional race in the county last year, raising an outcry that hastened the statewide switch to optical scanning. Sarasota County’s touch-screen machines are sequestered under court order while an investigation into last year’s election continues....

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/13/us/politics/13voting.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper&oref=slogin

[emsimon33]

1. Monetary costs solved: Since the machines are defective

Take the companies to court and get the money back! I don't see why municipalities and states aren't doing this in droves! In a free market economy, which the Republicans tout, shouldn't companies live and die by the free market? Meaning: If a company sells a defective product, they should bear the financial consequences!

[jimlup]

2. Astounding that after 2000 they would even consider

machines that don't leave a paper trail. These people are either idiots or believe everyone else is.

[Downtown Hound]

3. I don't think they were idiots

I think they thought that people are idiots and that they had the media on their side to prevent any serious discussion of the problems the machines caused.

As it turns out, they were right. In spite of a massive grassroots campaign against the machines, the media ignored the issue. And the bogus 2004 election is what we got as a result. They still tried to use the machines to throw off the results in 2006, but the tidal wave was so strong that even they couldn't fake it that time.

I hate to admit it, but sometimes these people really are brilliant, even if they are morally bankrupt and all around assholes.

[jimlup]

6. yeah... they believe everyone else is.

I also believe that vote fraud has occured with these machines. I would to find the smoking gun and put these people out of business for good.

[flordehinojos]

4. no. they are actually bush goons who want poppy's installed idiots (poppy's followers) in power.

like fog lifting out of a harbor, reports of thousands of ballots not counted in Duval County, Broward, Palm Beach, and in Miami-Dade County helped explain in hindsight the picture of a shocked, surprised, and almost tearful bush family gathered in a restaurant in texas on election night 2000, as CNN announced al gore the winner of the presidential election--and those reports also explain the bush family's black-out on t.v. images of themselves as jeb left the restaurant to the nearest phone to call his goons that would establish road blocks to voting precincts in the panhandle area of florida, and poll workers who would, using intimidating tacticts, otherwise prevent people trying to vote from actually voting.

The Bush 41 and Bush 43 presidencies should both hang in the same hall of shame for all eternity to come.

[RoccoR5955]

5. Not only do they owe for the voting machines...

But due to the fact that they used these defective machines to vote, they owe the AMERICAN PEOPLE the cost of the Bushco, Inc. residency in the White House. Had all the votes been counted, we would have a REAL man in office, not a poor excuse for a human being.

Maybe we can file a class action suit against the State of Florida, and their malpractice in the 2000 election, and hold them responsible for the costs of the war, Katrina, and any other calamities that this administration has, or will cause.

In most states, you can sue to the deepest pockets. Can you say Diebold?

[Elspeth]

7. Explain how my Diebold ATM gives me a receipt but the Diebold voting machine doesn't

Just sayin...