What was wrong with the old fashioned clunky things, where you flipped a bunch of levers, and flipped the big "I'm finished, so record everything" dealie to finish? Seemed to work okay...
They're relatively expensive, prone to wearing out, and unfortuantly designing and/or maintaining them is a more or less lost art. With wear you get the hanging chads that caused this whole mess in the first place.
Reminds me of the candy machines on a 'how stuff is made' episode - the candy makers are having to get parts for many of their tools made by machinists. *GASP* - I remember thinking at the time 'wasn't that how they fixed stuff back when the thing was made?'. Still, it's more expensive to get a gear made at a machine shop than to simply order a mass produced one.
If I was them I'd pay to have the things patterned. Shouldn't be too much that can't be made by a CNC machine today.
Back on voting machines, personally, I like the #2 pencil. Heck, I proposed THAT back when I was in school - and taking standardized tests several times a year. My solution was simple: Do a print out of the ballots, then run them through the frequently used, reliable, and relatively trustworthy scanners the school system had. Pull some random samples for verification.
If they need more machines - great, more for the school to use to avoid delays on our test scores.
Now, more than a decade later, they have scanners that fit over individual bins - which are perfectly fine. Just, after that, run some of the boxe's contents through the school scanning systems for verification.
Sanglant - a pencil allows people to adjust their votes during deciding, saves paper/ballots. You simply don't allow any erasers in the counting areas.
