On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Simon wrote: > Sometimes, IMHO, there's just no alternative to pen and paper. Surely > the manual method of ticking a box and having multiple human vote > counters checking ballots is the best option going, even if it is more > expensive. (I confess I've no idea what costs are involved either way.) According to Elections Canada, the 2000 general election cost $200.6 million (Canadian dollars). But this included everything, including maintenance of voter registries, reimbursement of expenses to political parties and candidates, etc. Source: http://www.elections.ca/content.asp?section=faq&document=faqelec&lang=e In that election, there were 28,846,761 voters, so the cost per voter was around $6.95 Canadian, or $5.43 US. I suspect that the cost to actually count the votes is significantly less than this figure. I have no idea what the figures are for electronic voting, but I doubt it can be done for much under $4 to $5/voter. Consider that the average polling station contributes a couple of hundred votes to the total. So you can hire six people at $25/hour for 5 hours each (two shifts) to man the station and count the ballots afterwards, and you've spent $750, some of which you recover in the form of income tax. :-) Now how many voting machines would such a polling station require? And can you buy a super-de-duper-de-luxe voting machine for $750? -- David.
