JaBbA's Hut

A report on the front page of the Cleveland Plain Dealer reports that at least some of the Cuyahoga County Commissioners want to dump the DREs for Optical Scan ballots:

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.

[...]

"In 2008, we're going to be in a predicament," Dimora said. "Our system can't handle the number of voters,"

Tom Hayes, who helped run the election, said counties with optical scan voting machines can handle big fluctuations in the number of voters. With optical scanners, voters fill out paper ballots to be scanned into computers. Elections officials can handle large turnouts just by adding places for voters to mark ballots.

"Electronic voting systems are not scalable to meet demand on Election Day," Hayes wrote in his final report to the commissioners. "Unlike optical scan or punch cards, where you can simply add inexpensive voting stations, there are not additional DRE (touch screen) machines available."

The dark lining to this good news is that they aren't looking past Diebold to supply the optical scan readers. The political influence, and the fact that they are an Ohio company, seems to be enough to have the county commissioners ignoring Diebold's recent history of incompetence and gross distortions to cover up their problems.

We need to look past the current crop of voting machines and look to companies that have a track record for secure machines that can be easily audited - slot machine manufaturers, for instance.

Bruce Schneier has a clear understanding of the requirements for secure elections.

UPDATE Vote for this at Daily Kos