Posted on 05/28/2005 8:39:00 AM PDT by Valin
MIAMI - Miami-Dade County's elections chief has recommended ditching its ATM-style voting machines, just three years after buying them for $24.5 million to avoid a repeat of the hanging and dimpled chads from the 2000 election.
Elections supervisor Lester Sola said in a memo Friday that the county should switch to optical scanners that use paper ballots, based on declining voter confidence in the paperless touch-screen machines and quadrupled election day labor costs.
Fifteen of Florida's 67 counties chose touch-screen machines after the 2000 election fiasco. The machines have caused problems during at least six elections, including the September 2002 primary, when some polls could not open and close on time and Democratic primary results for governor were delayed by a week.
Miami-Dade would be the first place in the nation to ditch the iVotronics machines for paper-based balloting, said Ken Fields, a spokesman for Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb., the company that makes the devices.
Sola said it would cost $9.4 million to $12.3 million to equip the entire county with optical scan machines.
His report was forwarded to the county commissioners who must decide whether to get rid of the machines. The touch-screen machines will be used in elections while the issue is decided, officials said.
Captains Quarters
http://www.captainsquartersblog.com/mt/archives/004580.php
May 28, 2005
Haste Makes Waste, Even In Florida
Remember the hue and cry that ensued from the use of punch-card ballots in Florida for the 2000 election? After decades of use across the nation, we were led to believe that Florida voters suddenly became completely inept at punching ballots. New voting systems had to be bought, now, in order to save the poor incompetent dears from themselves. Anyone who balked or asked questions hated democracy, of course.
Unfortunately, millions of dollars later, those questions have not disappeared. Miami-Dade's new voting machines are heading for the scrap heap, a $25 million testament to impulse buying and a lack of proper time and effort for researching needs and requirements:
Miami-Dade County's elections chief has recommended ditching its ATM-style voting machines, just three years after buying them for $24.5 million to avoid a repeat of the hanging and dimpled chads from the 2000 election.
Elections supervisor Lester Sola said in a memo Friday that the county should switch to optical scanners that use paper ballots, based on declining voter confidence in the paperless touch-screen machines and quadrupled election day labor costs.
Fifteen of Florida's 67 counties chose touch-screen machines after the 2000 election fiasco. The machines have caused problems during at least six elections, including the September 2002 primary, when some polls could not open and close on time and Democratic primary results for governor were delayed by a week.
Perhaps some lessons can be learned from this fiasco, which will cost Florida residents another $12 million to correct, for the optical-scan ballots that require voters to fill in bubbles on a paper ballot (assuming we can trust them to use a pen properly).
Lesson 1: All balloting methods carry a certain margin of error. Voters aren't perfect, and they will make mistakes.
Lesson 2: Assumption of responsibility for correctly casting a ballot should be on the voter, not the system.
Lesson 3: One bad experience after over 40 years of service -- an experience that doesn't even relate to the machines themselves -- does not demand the wholesale replacement of an entire system of voting.
Lesson 4: When upgrading to new technology, it helps to have a clear statement of the system requirements -- say, a paper record for review. Obviously, if electoral laws require recount procedures be available, paper records must be produced to validate the results.
Lesson 5: Look around to see what works in other areas. Minnesota has used the optical-scan technology that utilizes a paper record but validates the ballot to be error-free before the voter leaves the polling station. From this report, that system looks to cost half as much as the ATM-style touchscreens that Miami-Dade bought anyway.
Florida can thank all the hysterics from the aftermath of the 2000 election for wasting millions of dollars on the wrong technology. In truth, they could have saved 99% of that cash by simply printing signs that stated that voters should double-check their punch cards for fully punched selections before leaving the booth, and therefore put the onus for reliable voting processes where it belongs: on the voters themselves.
The DU types are reliving 2000 and 2004 still. Their cage has been rattled.
1 that's always a good thing
2 it's a bit like shooting fish in a barrel
3 when AREN'T they rattled?
I suspect there is more truth than speculation to this idea.
..and these FloriDUHians, can't push a few buttons and pull a lever???...the Dumboc'RATs are just really pissed, b/c they can't steal any more elections, its much more difficult now.
"Mentally Challenged, They Are...Hmmm" (Yoda :)
Voting machines make fraud to hard to execute.
Let's go back to paper so we can better defraud the voters.
Why don't the Rats just tell folks what they really want, and that's to pick our leaders for us. No voting allowed, because we're too stupid to make a choice for ourselves.
There have been a number of papers from the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project, and there is an interesting one compares various technologies at http://www.hss.caltech.edu/~voting/CalTech_MIT_Report_Version2.pdf
The reason for these "glitches" was NOT the voting machines - it was Miriam Oliphant, the completely incompetent Supervisor of Elections in Broward County. This woman was so incompetent that even though she's black, the NAACP was begging Jeb Bush to remove her from office, which he did.
The left will never be satisfied with voting in this country until they have a "system" in place where their hand-picked people get to "count" the ballots in some locked room, away from our prying eyes, and away from Republican election monitors.
The unspoken problem with getting accurate voter results in Floriduh.....has more to do with the unspeakable ignorance of too many of their voters....
Anything more complex that placing an "X" by the picture of a donkey -- is beyond their ability....
Think about it folks....people that stupid, many of them illegal voters -- who haven't made much of their life, voting on yours..
Semper Fi
Where is Oiliphant when we need her?
the Florida state legislature (Republican) needs to mandate that every county use the kind of electronic touch screen voting that miami dade uses.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.