Forida votes for paper

Submitted by acohill on Fri, 02/02/2007 - 07:06

The state of Florida is ready to toss electronic voting machines in the trash and go back to paper. The state plans to use paper ballots, where the voter makes a mark in an oval next to the candidate's name. The ballot is then scanned optically, just like the aptitude tests that have used this system for decades. The paper/optical scanning approach provides an audit trail that can be read manually if necessary but also provides for rapid vote counting by automated equipment.

The tragedy, of course, is that taxpayers get to foot the bill for this travesty--$30 million to purchase the new gear, and probably much more than that for the stuff destined for the landfill. And this was not even an honest mistake. Legislators had plenty of warning that the touch voting equipment was going to cause problems, and they went ahead and bought it anyway.

The core problem? Legislators believed the promises of equipment vendors, rather than getting advice from experts who would not benefit financially from the sale of such equipment. The same problem exists generally whenever you are buying any kind of network or computer gear: vendors, even the best ones, will sell you what they have, and that may not always match what you need. Make sure you understand your needs first, before talking to vendors about "solutions."