International Lottery & Totalizator Systems (fka ITSI)

[zenvesting]

Notes from the last public meeting of the PCEA

Webcast is available here:
http://new.livestream.com/accounts/1447444/events/2592251/feed_embed

The meeting was primarily a review of the PCEA's work to date, broken into two primary presentations:

1.) Nate Persilly performed a comprehensive review of issues brought to the commission during the past year of public meetings.

2.) MIT Professor Charles Stewart reviewed results of a survey of all the local elections officials in the U.S. (~8,000 jurisdictions).

Highlights of discussion of technology and more specifically, voting machines:

00:21:45 - Nate Persilly summarizes the issue of aging voting machines, highlighting the worries of the lack of funding for new machines and the possibility of a widespread breakdown of voting machines.

00:54:00 - Charles discusses costs of elections administration and mentions that he recently computed that they did a back of the envelope calculation of the cost to replace all voting equipment would be about $3 Billion dollars.

01:21:00 - Discussing the reasons for long lines, they asked "Over the next five years what areas of election administration are in significant need of improvement?" - Local officials primary response was that "Voting tech & voting machine capacity" were the primary concern.

1:26:00 - discussing the above finding, Nate notes that it's an overwhelming response considering there were 19 options to answer the question. Charles notes that 1/3 of the rank and file realize voting machines are a big issue and makes a good point that "it's a significant thing suggesting that when the voting machine issue gets bigger there is already a seed planted in the rank and file to accept this challenge of renewing the voting machines over the next 10 years".

The Commission is required to prepare a final report of the findings and recommendations by the first of the year.