By Brad Friedman on 5/13/2006, 3:15pm PT  

From today's Tennessean...

Used voting machines lack approval by state
Vendor changed contract form language, memo alerts counties

State officials say a vendor of voting machines that more than a dozen counties have lined up to buy surprised them by changing the contract form to allow for used equipment for the Aug. 3 elections.

The state election office had never signed off on the change, according to an "alert" memo it sent out to affected counties.

The April 12 memo said that Election Systems & Software Inc. had added --- without permission --- "used equipment" language to a Tennessee Voting Equipment order form. Davidson, Williamson and Wilson are among the counties waiting for their ES&S machines.
...
Eddie Bryan, chairman of the Davidson County Election Commission, said he doesn't know why ES&S bid on Metro's business if it can't deliver the goods.

"These people have been playing games with us," he said. "I'm not for having any used equipment."

As usual, btw, the reporter gets the story wrong with the same misinformation concerning the Help America Vote Act (HAVA):

The law requires at least one handicapped-accessible machine at each precinct.

As if we haven't repeated this hundreds of times here: HAVA requires one disabled-accessible voting device (not machine!) in each polling place (not precinct, though that error is one we had made previously ourselves). Larger point being that there are other devices for voting that can be used which are not "machines" --- despite how much the vendors appreciate the mainstream media doing their misinformation for them.

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Article Categories: ES&S, Tennessee, Election 2006