1. Capital Costs Upfront Purchase
Machine-count systems:
Hardware tabulators, ballot-marking devices, scanners, typically $3,000–$10,000 per unit, and often one machine per precinct or per few hundred voters.
Many counties are forced to purchase 200–1,000 machines, meaning initial costs can reach $2–10 million for a mid-sized jurisdiction.
Annual vendor maintenance contracts: $100,000–$500,000+ recurring.
Hand-marked, hand-count systems:
Cost: paper ballots, secure storage boxes, pens, tally sheets.
Initial capital costs are minimal: generally $1–2 per ballot printed and distributed.
Initial outlay for counting setups tables, transparent public observation space: under $100,000 for most counties a fraction of machine costs.
Upfront difference: Machine-count approaches cost 10–50× more to set up than full paper-hand systems.
https://samueleburns.substack.com/p/the-true-total-cost-comparison-between
No comments:
Post a Comment