In February
2005, the NYC Electronic Voting Systems Department released a preliminary draft
report comparing acquisition and ongoing costs of different types of voting
systems. While the authors acknowledge that "the report has limited value
as a reliable projection of actual costs", many election officials and
legislators have been quoting numbers from the report as if it were a
definitive study.
This is
unfortunate, as the EVS report is flawed, relying on unsupported assumptions
that exaggerate the costs of precinct based optical scan systems and
underestimate the cost of full face ballot touchscreen/pushbutton electronic
voting machines.
NYVV has
prepared an analysis of the EVS report
. Here is the original EVS report.
Bo Lipari