Home
Site Map
Reports
Voting News
Info
Donate
Contact Us
About Us

VotersUnite.Org
is NOT!
associated with
votersunite.com

Voting machine purchase set up
11/24/2005, 10:51 a.m. CT
The Associated Press    

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) ? The state will spend $31.1 million to buy 5,033 new voting machines and related equipment after a contract is signed to seal the deal next week, elections officials said. 
State officials negotiated the contract with Sequoia Voting Systems of Oakland, Calif., after the company submitted the lowest bid of $37 million for the equipment, Commissioner of Elections Angie Rogers LaPlace said Wednesday.

Louisiana has received about $47 million in federal money from the Help America Vote Act, which requires states to improve election procedures and equipment.

LaPlace said the contract likely will be signed next week and the first machines delivered in early December.

Secretary of State Al Ater, the state's chief elections officer, said 12 parishes ? including Orleans, Jefferson, St. Tammany, St. Bernard and Plaquemines ? already use Sequoia machines. When the new machines are operating in the other 52 parishes, Louisiana will have a uniform and "seamless voting system," he said. "This is a system the voters are already familiar with."

LaPlace said 4,482 of the new machines are full-face machines that can display the entire ballot. The other 551 are touch-screen machines for absentee voting, requiring a voter to go through each computer page to vote. Louisiana also will buy 110 scanners to count paper absentee ballots.

After a $1.5 million volume discount from Sequoia and a half-percent additional discount if the state pays the bill quickly, the tab will total $31,095,394. The company also gave Louisiana a $50-per-machine trade-in allowance for its old machines for a reduction of $210,750, LaPlace said.

LaPlace said an additional 128 voting machines must be replaced in St. Bernard Parish because they were all destroyed by hurricanes Rita and Katrina. The Federal Emergency Management Agency has indicated it will pay 90 percent of the costs and the state will pay 10 percent. Exact figures were not available.

By the time all expenditures are made, the state likely will have $10 million to $12 million left of the $47 million from the federal government, LaPlace said. It must be spent on elections.



Previous Page
 
Favorites

Election Problem Log image
2004 to 2009



Previous
Features


Accessibility Issues
Accessibility Issues


Cost Comparisons
Cost Comparisons


Flyers & Handouts
Handouts


VotersUnite News Exclusives


Search by

Copyright © 2004-2010 VotersUnite!