Quality Construction at a Price That’s Right 1

My two or three regular readers know that I am skeptical of the electronic voting movement; I’m not agin’ it, but I fear too little attention is being paid to security. (Brad Friedman follows the security issues closely.)

I should also have been concerned about quality.

Hampered by delays, defective batteries and too little room for storing and testing the machines, the (Virginia Beach) city’s board of elections decided to forgo electronic poll books this year.

Virginia Beach will be the only South Hampton Roads city not using the electronic poll books on Nov. 2.

The story goes on to explain that the Commonwealth decided to show its reverence for the vote by buying refurbished computers.

The boxes don’t seem to have been refurbished enough.

To make the deal affordable, the state opted to use refurbished laptops, and that’s where some of the problems have cropped up, said Alfred Giles, voting technology coordinator for the Virginia State Board of Elections.

The recent shipments of used computers from the vendor, TechTurn, a Texas-based company, have suffered from a high number of defects, Giles said. The state has returned about 250 defective laptops, a large number from Richmond and Virginia Beach, to TechTurn in recent months, Giles said.