A question about memory cards in voting machines

[Kelvin Mace]

The ES&S situation has me curious. They are having problems with memory cards (PCMCIA format) that use SRAM with a battery backup. The cards are failing, supposedly because of bad batteries, but some reports are coming in that the battery is not the culprit.

Rack my brain as I might, I cannot come up with any reason for them to use SRAM cards rather than cheaper Flash RAM cards which don't need a battery to store data. Granted they have a finite number of times they can be written to, but given the usage in your average election, this would mean they would fail around the time the Sun begins its final expansion.

Speed can't be an issue. While SRAM is faster than Flash, storing voting data is NOT a high speed operation.

The only reason I can think of is so the salesmen can soak the user by inflating the price of the card, and justifying it to the clueless yob that the data has a "battery backup".

Can anyone think of any reason (security, etc), that they would use SRAM with a battery rather than Flash RAM?

David Allen
www.blackboxvoting.com

[wakeme2008]

1. This geek

can not think of one good reason to use SRAM in these devices. While the newer flash memory clips are very fast, if you are writting 8 Meg files (one jpg), even the slow drives will be good for this type device.

:shrug:

[Kelvin Mace]

2. Not to mention that

the data being written is not anywhere that large for a single ballot. These are in OpScan systems which would just be recording a data string and a record ID (precinct, ballot, race, etc)

[Boredtodeath]

5. Ummm, actually the ACTUAL BALLOTS are on the PCMCIA card

If you look at the 1999 ES&S v. Global Patent Infringement lawsuit, you'll find that's the only difference in the 2 systems - and the only reason ES&S lost the suit.

In precincts with hundreds of ballots, space AND load time become a major issue.

[Kelvin Mace]

6. These are OpScan units

not DREs

[DoYouEverWonder]

3. I can't see why they can't go to the local

computer discount story and buy a bunch of cheap PC's, write a program to count votes in a database other then Access, and do it for less then $1000 per machine, with a printer if you really want to splurge.

[sutz12]

4. Sure there's a great reason...

It is called the 'Brother-in-Law Effect.' One of the top guys at the factory has a relative (the BIL) who owns a battery company, so you design his batteries into every project, whether it makes good engineering sense or not. Need to sell a couple of hundred thousand voting machines? Let's design in some obsolete circuits so BIL can make some money selling his batteries, too.