E-voting is proving to be an expensive affair all over the world. Solano County, California has just spent $415,000 getting out of their contract with Diebold so they can get optical-scan systems from ES&S for the bargain price of $4.2 million.
Meanwhile in the Republic of Ireland, Martin Cullen (the minister responsible for trying to push e-voting) has several groups after his head for spending €42 million on e-voting and associated publicity costs. Yesterday there was a call to refer the spending to the Comptroller and Auditor General as a misuse of public money. Key to this is that:
The day before e-voting was halted, €1.1m was spent on PR and advertising, yet the final bill was €3.3m. The contract was awarded to a consortium led by a firm described as “friends of Fianna Fáil”.
Jason Kitcat 