New polling gear gets rave reviews from Georgia voters

Georgia voters who participated in an electronic voting pilot project Nov. 6 endorsed the technology by an overwhelming margin, according to an exit poll conducted by the secretary of state.Of the nearly 2,200 voters polled who used one of six types of direct-recording equipment to cast their ballots, 95 percent agreed that the state should upgrade its voting system to the electronic equipment, the secretary of state’s office said.About 97 percent of the voters surveyed said the equipment was “very easy” or “easy” to use, and 96 percent said they were “confident” or “very confident” that their vote was recorded correctly.Georgia Secretary of State Cathy Cox plans to deploy new voting equipment in all 159 counties. “This new data presents a very powerful endorsement for the course Georgia has set to deploy a modern, uniform voting system by 2004,” she said in a statement.The project used voting equipment from six manufacturers: Diversified Dynamics Inc. of Glen Allen, Va.; Election Systems and Software Inc. of Omaha, Neb.; Global Election Systems Inc. of McKinney, Texas; Hart InterCivic Inc. of Austin, Texas; Shoup Voting Solutions Inc. of Quakertown, Pa.; and Unilect Corp. of Dublin, Calif.