Florida County May Ditch Touch-Screen Voting

[Patsy Stone]

http://www.nbc6.net/news/4543764/detail.html

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.

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.

Sorry if this is a dupe...

[suffragette]

1. hope this is the beginning of a trend

toward having a trustworthy and accountable system.

[mpanno]

2. Just found out that suburban Cook County in IL

is going to have optiscan voting machines.:grr: :wtf:

[Wilms]

4. The other choice was DRE's

OpScans have problems to be contended with, but a DRE--especially if it lacks VVPAT--would really do us in.

[Gyre]

3. Well that was taxpayer money well spent!

But better to get raped and then take steps so it doesn't happen again, then to just hunker down standby your corruptable system cause you don't have the courage to admit you fucked up and you don't give a damn if your voters have a representative government.:)

Gyre

[LeahD]

5. Heard this on the radio today....

AAR Station, CNN News segement that runs at the top of the hour. Made me smile!

[Bill Bored]

8. Sure but this is the part of the news cycle nobody pays attention to.

Like when the Aug 6 PDB was released the Saturday before Easter Sunday.
If this story isn't in the Sunday papers tomorrow, it might as well be in the bit bucket!

Anyone want to blast the media for some coverage?

[LeahD]

9. Doubt that it will make my Sunday paper,

but hopefully it will make the FL papers... in places other than Miami-Dade.

How about blasting the County Commissioners who will be making the decision about dumping the touchscreens?


(Just noticed the typo in my last post...too late to edit.)

[Patsy Stone]

6. This follows these two previous stories

4/1/2005

http://www.local10.com/news/4337086/detail.html

MIAMI -- Miami-Dade Elections Supervisor Constance Kaplan has resigned amid revelations of voting problems in six elections.

The veteran Chicago election official was recruited to help the county erase the embarrassing memories of the 2000 presidential election.

She took over in June 2003 and quit effective immediately. Her chief deputy Lester Sola will take her place at least temporarily.

County Manager George Burgess describes the decision as mutual. But he had questioned Kaplan about a voting glitch that lost hundreds of ballots in a March 8 special election that decided, among other things, the fate of slot machines in Miami-Dade County. Kaplan said a software glitch caused the votes to be tossed out. That marked the sixth time under Kaplan's watch that votes had been lost in an election.

And then this one on 4/16/05:

http://www.local10.com/news/4370077/detail.html

County Manager Calls For Examination Of Touch-Screen Machines

Miami-Dade County Manager George Burgess is calling on the office of elections to take a close look at its touch-screen voting machines.

Burgess wants workers to examine how the machines are coded and how well employees are trained to use them.

Burgess said, "Truly what we really want to do is work at how we conduct election -- look at alternative technology to make sure we are comfortable going forward."

[Bill Bored]

7. Unfortunately, a possibly honest BOE Supervisor had to resign

over this crap. I can't help thinking she was set up.
When you run DREs, you run BOEs!
Leave out a checkbox on a ballot definition screen, and you get your boss fired! Nice work if you can get it. Who did it, ES&S or Diebold?