One Destined for a Museum, Some Sent to an Election Near You, Others to be Gone Forever...Finally...
By Brad Friedman on 3/10/2008, 4:24pm PT  

Blogged by Brad from the road...

The report is music to our ears, and far too long in coming. From today's Tampa Tribune...

TAMPA - Workers today started loading more than 3,000 touch-screen voting machines destined to be resold, disassembled or crunched into bits by a recycler as Hillsborough County begins changing how ballots are cast and counted.
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The devices will be replaced by machines that scan and record paper ballots as part of a legislatively mandated change requiring a paper trail after elections.
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The machines being hauled away by Creative Recycling of Tampa were 6 years old. The company has a state contract to dispose of 27,785 of the touch-screen machines in counties using them.

Hillsborough County's Supervisor of Elections, Buddy Johnson, offers the best use of the machines --- he says in the article that "he wanted to donate one to the county's history museum" --- but beware, while some are to be scrapped, some of these bad machines may show up at an election near you...

The first step for the recycling company is to try selling the machines to states that still allow touch-screen voting.

Then, Creative Recycling workers will extract parts that can be resold, such as a thermal printer in each machine.

Any pieces that can't be sold will wind up shoved into a two-story-tall machine that will mash them into bits that will be separated and recycled.

We shall drift off to bed tonight, imagining the sweet, sweet sound of touch-screen voting machines being "mashed into bits." We never thought we'd say it, but: Thank you, Florida.

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