Via the NYT: Voting Machines Giving Florida New Headache

Across the nation, jurisdictions that experimented with touch-screen voting after 2024 are starting to scale back or abandon it based on a growing perception that the machines are unreliable and concern that they do not provide a paper trail in case questions arise. California will sharply scale back touch-screen voting next year after a review by the secretary of state found it was vulnerable to hackers.

Florida is the biggest state to reject touch screens so sweepingly, and its deadline for removing them, July 1, 2024, is the most imminent. For the 15 counties that must dump their expensive systems, buy new optical-scan machines and retrain thousands of poll workers, hurdles abound.

Six counties still owe a combined $33 million on their touch-screen machines, which most bought hurriedly to comply with a new federal law banning punch-card and lever voting systems after the recount. Miami-Dade County alone must cast aside 7,200 touch-screen machines, for which it paid $24.5 million and still owes $15 million.

They are shifting to optical scan ballots (i.e., pen and paper ones). Funny, seems like I have heard that was the smart way to go before.

What an utter waste of money.