Texas Lawmakers Repeal 2021 Law Requiring $116M Purchase Of Nonexistent “Write Once” Voting Machines

The Texas Tribune reports:

Texas lawmakers have voted to reverse an expensive state law requiring election officials to replace all their current vote-counting equipment with technology that doesn’t exist. An unprecedented mandate the Legislature passed in 2021, without fully realizing its consequences, would have decertified equipment that counties currently use to count votes, to be replaced by machines on which data “once written, cannot be modified,” at an estimated cost of more than $100 million.

The secretary of state’s office estimated that it would cost taxpayers more than $116 million to replace the eliminated equipment, plus an ongoing cost of more than $37 million every two years, since new equipment would have to be purchased for each election. And that’s only if counties could have found such equipment. Voting equipment that would match the requirements does not appear to have been invented by any election equipment company operating in the United States.

Read the full article. There’s much more stupidity.

Texas Legislature averts $100 million consequences of 2021 law requiring nonexistent election technology —@NataliaECG @VotebeatUS @TexasTribune https://t.co/Nhauyoq2fF

— Jon Taylor (@ProfJonTaylor) May 26, 2023