States throw out costly electronic voting machines

[TechBear_Seattle]

I love how this appears the day after the Washington primaries, when voters in King County were given a hard sell to use EVMs at their polling places. (The rest of the state has gone to all-mail ballots, which does not have the security and oversight of even EVMs. King County will follow suit starting next year.)

States throw out costly electronic voting machines

The demise of touch-screen voting has produced a graveyard of expensive corpses: Warehouses stacked with thousands of carefully wrapped voting machines that have been shelved because of doubts about vanishing votes and vulnerability to hackers.

What to do with this high-tech junkyard is a multimillion-dollar question. One manufacturer offered $1 apiece to take back its ATM-like machines. Some states are offering the devices for sale on eBay and craigslist. Others hope to sell their inventories to Third World countries or salvage them for scrap.

A few more are holding out hope that the machines, some of which were purchased for as much as $5,000, could one day be resurrected.

"We store them very, very carefully in the hopes that someone, someday may decide that we can use them again," said San Diego County Registrar Deborah Seiler, whose jurisdiction spent $25 million on the devices.

The article continues at http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008125805_votejunk20.html

[LiberalFighter]

1. $5,000 a piece? Highway robbery!!

[aquart]

2. I want them dismantled and destroyed.

Perhaps some artist can use them to make a monument to greed and stupidity.

[LiberalEsto]

3. It won't happen in Maryland

The state elections administrator -- unfortunately a Democrat -- has been a huge promoter of Diebold and even traveled to other states to promote the machines. :(