Cuyahoga County Commissioners want new voting machines

[Algorem]

http://www.cleveland.com/news/plaindealer/index.ssf?/base/cuyahoga/1164794175139720.xml&coll=2

Commissioners want new voting machines
$17 million touch screens can't handle big elections, Cuyahoga officials say

Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Joan Mazzolini
Plain Dealer Reporter

Cuyahoga County commissioners want to dump their new touch-screen voting machines, which cost taxpayers $17 million, and get another system in time for the 2008 presidential election.

"Even though we have a substantial amount of money in it, we're considering scrapping the whole system," Commissioner Tim Hagan said.

Hagan and Commissioner Jimmy Dimora said the county can't afford to spend $14 million to run every election the way they did the Nov. 7 general election. Commissioners threw millions of dollars to the Board of Elections for poll worker training, consultants and extra machines.

The spending worked -- the election was mostly a success, with just a few polling locations having trouble getting the touch screen machines running on time. The biggest complaint was long lines at some locations...

[OhioChick]

1. Simple solution.......

paper ballots.

[dipsydoodle]

4. Simpler solution

Only Republicans need vote.

Subtract their votes from the electoral total and the balance, quite naturally, is the Democratic vote. Would sure put a stop to denial of voting rights to those who would vote for the Democratic Party. If there are any Independants tell them to go away and stop trying to confuse the issue.

[Trillo]

2. Of course there are long lines...

...but not necessarily for the reasons being framed by any of the articles in the corporate media.

Voting on one of the damned DREs with VVPAT takes AT LEAST four times as long as either punching the punch card or filling little circles in with pens, unless the voter doesn't care about the summary double self-check and triple checking the paper trail.

I believe DUer LandShark advocates the best solution.

[wakeme2008]

3. I remember in Tampa when they were looking at new machines

It was like 3 million for opt scanners or 15 million for TS. They went with the 15 million :shrug: