Reply #12: MS: State bond fund to finance more voting machines - HAVA ain't enough [View All]

State bond fund to finance more voting machines

Wednesday, March 01, 2006

By LEA ANNE BRANDON

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Last week, 240 of those new Diebold touch screen voting machines were delivered to the Madison County Circuit Clerk’s office.

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Last summer, Clark announced that he had negotiated and signed a contract with Diebold Election Systems Inc. to supply 5,164 new touch-screens at a statewide “bulk purchase” cost of $15 million. Counties had the option of purchasing the Diebold equipment under the state-negotiated below market price and receiving state funds to help with that cost or of selecting their own federally acceptable equipment and paying for it with local tax revenues. After weeks of flip-flopping between Clark’s recommendation and other available equipment, Madison County officials opted for the Diebold machines.

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According to Assistant Secretary of State Jay Eads, Madison County was initially allocated $336,000 in federal and state funds to purchase 157 Diebold machines, $10,000 for tabulation servers and software; $100,800 for installation, training and voter education; $126,000 for five years of support and maintenance from Diebold; and $20,000 for a SEMS interface system to connect the county to a statewide voter tabulation system. That total of $592,800 was supplemented by another $200,000 of county funds to purchase the 240 machines initially ordered for the county’s use.

“We still don’t know for sure how much it is going to cost us to comply with the federal order and to meet the needs of a county that is growing as fast as ours,” said District 1 Supervisor Douglas Jones.

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http://www.onlinemadison.com/Main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=16488