Diebold Menace Update, Georgia Edition

Just in from the indefatigable Garland Favorito, a solution to Georgia's unverifiable electronic voting systems!


Yeah it costs some moola, not as much moola as the state spent on boat ramps, the Oaky Woods debacle or anywhere near the amount that Georgia Power's gonna skin all of us for over the next ten years until they get the nuke plant built. The question is, how much is your vote worth? I'm willing to bet that the Handelista faction of the republican party of Georgia wishes there was some kind of recount system that actually worked in place. So do us Libertarians.


Another startling bit of info is the news that the mighty, mighty Diebold TS R6 equipment the state so foolishly purchased is about to hit it's preprogrammed 10 year life span self destruct cycle. It'll be a real hoot when the entire system crashes in 2012 and reveals that Mickey Mouse is in fact Georgia's choice for the Presidency of the United States. And an audit of the system by the system will reveal that that was the way Georgian's voted, case closed, STFU, STFD.


Here's the latest from Garland:

New Study cites cost effectiveness of opti-scan vs. DRE voting

VoterGA Supporters,

You may remember that election officials have contended for years that new voting systems will cost Georgia $100 million dollars and have no savings benefits. We have countered saying that the costs  are only actually only 25-35% of that and the multi-million dollar annual savings would pay for the machines in about five or less election cycles. A new December 2, 2010 study conducted for the state Maryland, which has the same equipment as Georgia, now confirms our basic claims.

Replacement of the statewide Diebold TS R6 electronic voting equipment with optical scan equipment would pay for itself in about five election cycles according to the study. The study projected a $14 million initial cost with a savings of over a million per year. Georgia has about 50% more equipment, thus the costs using the same equipment change would be about $20 million and the savings nearly $2 million annually. We had originally estimated a cost closer to $30 million including ballot markers for the visually impaired, and savings of nearly  $3 million a year. In any case, the machines will pay for themselves in 10 years even if the state did not purchase any new electronic voting equipment.  That is considered a good return on investment by most any investor.

The Maryland legislature previously passed legislation to require the Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail systems be implemented there but governor, Martin O’ Malley, blocked the implementation citing a funding shortfall. The study also pointed out that life span of the TS R6 equipment, (which Georgia implemented in 2002), is 10 years. A link to the full study can be found on the VoterGA home page or here:

Maryland Optical Scan-DRE Cost Study

Garland

www.voterga.org