corrente

Citing a lack of voter confidence...

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.
(via AP)

They don't work, and they quadruple the costs. Typical Republican privatization scheme, I'd say!

UPDATE Alert reader webslinger has this to say:

oh but they DID work......they did exactly what they were supposed to do. First we raise the alarm that we 'need' these fancy machines, so Jeb goes out and gets the most expensive, so that there can be no problems, only the guarantee of 100% satisfaction (no money back). Then when they are wheeled out before the election(s) there is no time to fix any errors, no money to fix the errors and no way to prove that every vote counted. The Republican contributors get paid for the contract, the Republican Secretary of State runs for congress and wins, the Republican Prezint gets re-elected, so does his worthless brother, and the Dems are left holding the bill. Thats exactly what these worthless machines were build for. They should just call them dildos - cuz we all got fucked!

Chortle...