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Nazareth, Pa., United States

Monday, October 22, 2018

NorCo Receives Pittance For New Voting Machines

Fyodor Dostoevsky displays new voting machine. 
Pennsylvania's Department of State has mandated all 67 counties to have new voting machines in place - with paper trails - in time for the next Presidential election. But it only has $14.1 million in grants available for voting systems expected to cost $147 million. The counties will have to pick up the slack. Also, only one system with a paper trail has been certified, and NorCo officials like another system.

That system is the ExpressVote XL — a full-face Universal Voting System that includes a 32" HD screen and an independent voter-verifiable paper record that is digitally scanned for tabulation.

County Council on Thursday night voted 8-0 to accept a $341,969.77 grant earmarked for the purchase of new voting machines with a voter-verifiable paper record.

That's a drop in the bucket. Delaware recently voted to spend $13 million for 1,500 ExpressVote XLs. That's $8,666 per machine.  There must be two and sometimes three machines at NorCo's approximately 160 precincts. That means a price of at least $4.1 million.

12 comments:

Anonymous said...

Where the Hell is voter registration.

Anonymous said...

What did they do with the old mechanical machines that we used for decades, they were great, lasted forever, and were infallible. I suppose they sent them all to the crusher. Government is great at creating waste. Just like math books, we could be and would probably be better off if we used the ones from 50 years ago.

Anonymous said...

This is ridiculous. Some one in Harrisburg gets a kick back from the Voting machine companies so now everyone needs new machines. Where does this bullshit stop. We are not bottomless money pits, we are taxpayers living on fixed incomes. Stop already. I can't afford you bastards in Harrisburg. We must vote against every incumbent and get them out of office.

Bernie O'Hare said...

"Where the Hell is voter registration."

I wrote in two different stories that voters has moved from Milides to the courthouse. When it was at Governor Wolf,did you complain?

"What did they do with the old mechanical machines that we used for decades, they were great, lasted forever, and were infallible. I suppose they sent them all to the crusher."

They were great but were at the end of their useful life. You could not even get parts for them. They were scrapped.

"This is ridiculous. Some one in Harrisburg gets a kick back from the Voting machine companies so now everyone needs new machines."

Nt ridiculous at all. Most people want a paper trail and now they will have one. I just wish the state kicked in more money. That is over a half mill of real estate taxes.

Peter j.Cochran said...

We had machines that we “ could not find the contractor “ NorCo lost money there before. The cost is simple price gouging. Paper is cheaper, use of ballet box’s before spending millions on stuff that sits in closet most of the year .

Anonymous said...

Did they hid it in the courthouse. No one could tell where it is.

Bill Coyle said...

Nice homage to Russian literature;)

Anonymous said...

agree with 7pm, the place is inaccessible, A real crap location. Ask the staff.

Peter J .Cochran said...

Anon 7:00 , Voter Regestration is in the Court House .One must first go past security of Sheriff s Department. They will screen you pretty good too. Get screened ,then turn left , follow to court room No1 - all the back to old sections of court house , then turn right at doors follow back to sign . Plan to park the car ,put money in the meter and have 23 minutes to go in and come back out before your keys are out again. The 4 didget number of the room provided does not guide the citizen except one could guess the 11th floor !

Bernie O'Hare said...

It is on the first floor of the courthouse in the county seat, where the law says it must be. That's the way it is. Milides was great for the workers bc they had their own parking spots but it was bad bc they were a security risk. They lose their personal parking spots and now are safer and there will be 64 more spots available to the public and employees.

Anonymous said...

Did the County let any end users such as the general public try these machines to see if anyone even liked them. I bet the answer is no. Northampton County isn't that smart, another piece of garbage and more money down the drain.

Kevin F. Danyi said...

One hopes that the Karamazov brothers won't be voting this year.