Nice work DU: The ongoing demise of electronic voting machines!

[JackRiddler]

If it ever seems totally pointless, you can at least think on how DU - and a large part of the allied blogosphere - did its part in killing paperless touchscreen voting. Ohio and many other places will still have it in November, and we've hardly solved the larger problems of election fraud by many means (which will never happen until justice is pursued for the already stolen elections), but at least touchscreens are being decertified and junked across the country.

http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5jej6XIWrQn6-gw5O5bJa1ELx78DgD92LLDO00

States throw out costly electronic voting machines

By DEBORAH HASTINGS – 1 hour ago

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 a piece 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.

It wasn't supposed to be this way. After the disputed 2000 presidential recount, Congress provided more than $3 billion to replace punch card and lever-operated machines. State officials across the country said the new systems would eliminate human error and political tampering.

But problems with the machines soon followed: vanishing votes, breakdowns, malfunctions and increasing evidence that the devices were vulnerable to hackers.

[Laughing Mirror]

1. It was a very effective con, while it lasted

And like a very good con, they won't be missed.

[10 Year Freeper]

6. Huh?

Republicans hate voting machines too. Paper ballots under lock and key are the only way to run an election.

[Ian_rd]

2. Many State officials love these machines because it makes everything look nice and neat ...

... by eliminating all evidence of potential tampering. It's not the actual performance or quality they desire, they just prefer a system that allows them to stand up to the press and say, "No mistakes again this year!" and go home in time for Leno.

And as for the manufacturers themselves, I suppose mob bosses love the kind of murder that leaves no body or weapon behind for investigators to discover.

[tbyg52]

5. Yep. A lot of it is just laziness, and a desire not to be held accountable, on their part. nt

[JackRiddler]

3. kick

[DCKit]

4. Best single news story so far this year. n/t

[seemslikeadream]

7. National holiday for voting

The most important holiday we could have, for the most important thing we do