Bo Lipari reports on the New York City Board of Elections’ preliminary study of Annual Costs Comparison

Hello New Yorkers for Verified Voting,

The New York City Board of Elections has just released a preliminary study comparing three different types of DRE systems and a precinct based optical scan system. The report is an excellent starting point for beginning to analyze the acquisition and maintenance costs of the different voting systems.

The report correctly states that "the report has limited value as a reliable projection of actual costs. The report is useful, however, in identifying cost areas".

There are a number of key assumptions in the report that I believe are incorrect. In particular, replacement ratios of new equipment for existing lever machines are questionable, as are the estimates of the ballot printing costs for optical scan systems. Nevertheless, even with some of these flawed assumptions, the report shows the acquisition cost of precinct based scanning is still far less expensive than the alternatives.

New Yorkers for Verified Voting will be releasing an analysis of the report in a few days. I'll send you a copy as soon as it is ready.

Thanks,

Bo