What ever happened to those hanging chads?
Funny you should ask. In 2008, Associated Press reported that Jim Dobyns, a Republican political consultant, bought 1200 of the discredited Votomatic III machines and was selling them on eBay, then came up with the idea of collecting up the chads and selling those too. He offered the chads for sale in bags of 10 for $20. Have the problems associated with hanging chads been eradicated? The Help America Vote Act of 2002 provided funding to help the states update their voting equipment. By the time the 2008 elections rolled around the punch-card was virtually obsolete. Are there other ballot irregularities that could have a similar impact to the hanging chad? In the race to replace punch-card ballots, many jurisdictions rushed new voting equipment into service. Touch screen voting machines were subject to controversy and abandoned in some jurisdictions because of concerns they could be hacked or manipulated, not because of actual occurrences of improper vote recording. But there have been
