Tampa company reselling, recycling old voting machines

Sunday, September 7, 2008

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The state of Florida is trying to dispose of nearly 30,000 touch-screen voting systems.

TAMPA (Bay News 9) -- The state of Florida is trying to figure out what to do with thousands of touch-screen voting machines now that they've been replaced by optical-scan machines.

In February, the state announced they had contracted with electronics recyclers Creative Recycling Systems to handle nearly 30,000 touch-screen voting machines.

At the CRS warehouse in Tampa, a huge shredder breaks computer components down into small pieces for recycling. Parts of nearly 12,000 touch-screen voting machines will meet this fate.

Company president Jon Yob said that some parts of the machines, like the LCD screens and the printers, can be resold. The rest of the machine will be shredded and recycled.

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However, almost 17,000 machines are still intact in CRS' warehouse because the company is trying to sell them whole.

If they are unable to sell them, then the machines will be taken apart and resold or recycled.

Yob said finding someone who wants to buy the used machines has been a challenge.

"Obviously there's been a lot of talk about voting machines," he said. "We've had limited success selling whole machines. We've had significant success reselling parts from the machines we've disassembled."

The machines that aren't resold will go through a shredder and eventually be recycled.

Hillsborough County alone lost about $3 million when it got rid of its machines. Supervisor of Elections Buddy Johnson said that's the price paid for confidence in the state's voting system.

"There was a question about the touch screens," he said. "They didn't have a paper trail. They worked fine. I think it was a good decision to buy them when we did, but the law changed. It's my job to implement the law," he said.

CRS will receive a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the machines. The rest of the money will go to the state. Officials say they will use this money to try to retire the debt incurred by some of the counties.