Electronic Voting Machines

So  Minister Gormley has finally pressed the shutdown button on the e-voting machines.

Since the day he took office – he knew that this day would eventually come. Given the current financial situation however, I think the announcement was actually the easy part.

The difficult part will be the job of the inter-departmental task force and their efforts to disengage from the storage contracts and offloading the machines themselves – while at the same time trying to “recoup as much as possible of their cost” – the last bit are not my words.

Who on earth would buy these things? Are they worth anything? Have they too much of a history?

As a collector of retro home computers circa the early 1980′s – I wouldn’t mind getting my hands on one of them; I have some form here – last year I tried to make contact with the guy who has a shed load of the infamous Florida voting machines; I’m glad to report he didn’t respond – things must be good in the Everglades for Del Boy types flogging suitcase sized e-voting machines complete with “hanging chads”.

But I wonder – is the ONLY market for these machines to be flogged on e-bay? Or the electronic equivalent of a bike sale down in Kevin Street Garda Station? Or would some organisation like Camara benefit from a donation of the machines (PC’s) that were used to do the count – presumably there’s at least one, and probably a lot more in each of the count centres?

Your thoughts please.

Update : Apologies to Camara, they’re actually of no use to you – Is it true that these things only have a 386 processor?