Thursday, July 26, 2007

Buyer's remorse


"ES&S misleads its customers in the Commonwealth, and judging from conversations with other election directors at a recent election officials’ conference in Portland, Oregon — other jurisdictions as well”
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-Luzerne County Election Bureau Director Leonard Piazza
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After spending over $2 million for these things the company that sold them to us won't guarantee them for more than a year without buying an extended warranty plan. It's like they bought them at Best Buy. It was a rushed decision to buy theses machines in the first place because the county was afraid of losing the federal funding to pay for them. As with most hasty decisions the details come back to bite you in the ass. Now ESS wants another $300,000 to extend the warranty for just 3 years and will want more after that warranty period runs out.
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This whole electronic voting machine thing has always struck me as a complicated solution to a simple problem. As I've said before; Every level of society has become technology drunk. Why use a pencil and paper when you can use a $3000 machine to do the same thing?

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