While we wait to see if Professor Clarkson will gain access to Kansas voting records, Wired notes that the state of voting machines in general is wretched:
Nearly every state is using electronic touchscreen and optical-scan voting systems that are at least a decade old, according to a report by the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law (.pdf). Beyond the fact the machines are technologically antiquated, after years of wear and tear, states are reporting increasing problems with degrading touchscreens, worn-out modems for transmitting election results, and failing motherboards and memory cards.
States using machines that are at least 15 years old include Florida, Kentucky, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Texas, Virginia, and Washington, which means they are far behind even a casual tech user in keeping pace with technological advancements. …
In addition to this problem, a number of voting machine vendors have gone out of business, making it difficult for states to find parts to service their machines. Forty-three states use systems that are no longer manufactured. Some election officials have resorted to scouring eBay for decommissioned equipment they can cannibalize to extend the life of their machines. Georgia was in such dire straits over the lack of parts for its voting machines that it hired a consultant to build customized hardware that could run its Windows 2000-based election system software.
After tallying up problems with old hardware, flawed software & voting standards, decertification, etc, comes the subject of money:
Officials in nearly three dozen states told the Brennan Center they’re interested in replacing their antiquated voting machines but don’t have money to do so. Most states have used up the Help America Vote Act funds allocated to them in 2002 to purchase the flawed machines they now have. The issue with aging voting machines cuts across class lines: wealthier election districts in some states have already found the money to buy new machines, while the poorer districts around them remain stuck with failing machines.
The Brennan Center estimates that the cost of replacing systems would run more than $1 billion. Virginia spent about $12,000 per precinct to replace its voting machines this year, and last year New Mexico replaced its aging voting equipment at a cost of $12 million across the state.
It would be interesting to see a comparison on the costs of replacing and maintaining the machines vs returning to the manual counting style. Which is more accurate? Which can sustain an audit which inspires confidence? I deliberately do not include speed in the list, as I do not consider that a critical component of the election process.
It’s also interesting to contemplate how the loss of election machines may damage attempts to commit widespread voting fraud. Of course, it depends on the point of corruption – if the voting machines themselves are taking incorrect votes, then their loss damages the causes of the corrupters, while if the corruption takes place at more central servers, then the replacement of the voting machines may not matter. But if they’re not replaced at all, then do the manually counted votes eventually get entered into the server? Or do we just see the Secretary of State, on a television show, toting up county reports two weeks later?
As an aside, I recall, from many, many years ago, a former election official telling me that her precinct’s ballots had become inadvertently drenched. They ended up tossing them into an oven for a gentle drying before driving them to the collection point for the ballots.
I’ll leave the jokes to you folks.
(Meteor Blades @ The Daily Kos also covered the issue of old election machines)
