This article in today's Boston Globe was mentioned in thread by Jellybean1 in GD under the title "Letter to Atlanta Paper":
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=104&topic_id=119271&mesg_id=119271Here is the link to the Boston Globe article:
http://www.boston.com/dailyglobe2/214/metro/Menino_OK_s_new_voting_machines+.shtml<snip>
Mayor Thomas M. Menino has signed a $1.5 million contract to buy new optical-scan voting machines, but city councilors and voting rights advocates, who want the city to choose more advanced, touch-screen technology, are fighting a last-ditch effort to derail the purchase.
...
Nancy Lo, who heads the elections department, told the council that federal and state regulations forced the city to go with the optical scanners. A new federal law, approved in response to the Florida presidential election debacle in 2000, requires cities and states to replace lever and punch-card machines with optical scanners or the touch-screen system in time for the 2004 presidential election. In Massachusetts, Secretary of the Commonwealth William F. Galvin hasn't approved the use of the touch-screen machines, so Boston had to choose the optical scanners, Lo said.
Not every councilor is upset about that choice: Council president Michael Flaherty endorsed the decision yesterday, saying, ''It is the right time for the city of Boston to go down this road.''
Representatives from Diebold, which sells both systems, told the council that Boston was better off with the optical scanners. John Silvestro, president of the company, said the optical scanning system reduces lines at polling places and helps preserve the integrity of elections by leaving a paper ''audit trail.'' He also said the touch-screen system would cost the city about six times as much money, and that companies like his are still working the kinks out of the touch-screen machines, a newer technology.<snip>
So hats off to the folks in Boston!
Mayor: Thomas M. Menino
Secretary of the Commonwealth: William F. Galvin
Elections Department Head: Nancy Lo
And I can't imagine Diebold making this kind of statement prior to the release of that report last week from Johns Hopkins. News article:
http://www.msnbc.com/news/943558.asp?0cv=TA00
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