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"Ian S. Piper" wrote:
I
believe that the battery must be able to run all day or at least be
easily swapable with minimal interruption of service. With the
Accu-Vote paper ballot system, if the power goes out, the people who
arrive at the polling place can still vote and leave. The paper
ballot can be processed later. With the DRE system, if the power
goes out all day and you have a 3 hour battery backup, nobody can vote
after three hours. A DRE system needs to be capable of running all
day from just prior to opening the polls to an hour after closing the
polls (approx. 14 hours/ FEC says 16 hours).
A battery large enough to run a
system all day long would be expensive, so a swapable battery system
would be my choice. That is, put a minimum capacity battery into
the DRE to run it for 3 hours (that would keep product cost down per
unit), but make it easily accessible so it can be swapped out quickly
(minimizing disruption to voting) if the power is out longer than 3
hours. Trouble shooters on the road on election day can carry
spare battery packs with them in the event of a power outage longer than
3 hours. I agree with Ian
on the battery(provided the world was perfect) but if we can,t have a
battery that lasts all day then what? A battery with at least 3 hrs. would
allow time for providing a portable generator to be set up or
something.
Mickey, you didn't
read my second paragraph on that subject.
Also,
I believe that the one single thing that now sets us apart from
everyone else is the size of our screen. I don't believe a smaller
screen would be of value because no matter the jurisdiction size
they may have races with a large number of candidates or issues that
require large amounts of space. I disagree with Mickey. Right now, we competing with small
screen DREs. Right now, sales people are having to justify the
cost/benefit of a large screen. What if a customer doesn't mind a
small screen unit? Wouldn't you like to have the option to sell
them what they want and be competitive? Global cannot sell
15" DREs for the same price that the competition is selling
10" DREs, but if we are capable of producing a 10" Accu-Vote
TS, we can be competitive.
Having said that, multiple options
that have to be implemented on the manufacturing floor are what kill me
in production (as opposed to PCMCIA pluggable options which are easy to
implement). To stay ahead of orders, I have to manufacture to what
we think is going to be the flavor of future sales. Having
multiple flavors of a product means having to manufacture a bit of
everything and not having enough of one thing come shipping time.
But if the flavors are kept to a minimum of two (say vanilla and
butterscotch ripple), I can manage production stock more
effectively. I think those two flavors should be the 10" and
15" screen option.
Ian Sorry
Ian, can't agree with you on this one. What if we were in the business of
selling airplanes and someone wanted to buy a jet to fly across the ocean
but did not have the money to buy one that would hold enough fuel? They did
however, have enough money to purchase a smaller jet and wanted us to sell
it to them. Would we sell the smaller jet even if we knew it could not
handle the job? I think not.
What if the customer's requirements are
only to cross the Great Lakes? In your world, you are only going to be
able to sell him a jet that flys across oceans but your jet isn't pratically
priced for flying over the Great Lakes. Are you saying you wouldn't be
interested in selling him a Great Lakes' product and lose market share to the
competition? Or are you saying Global should only sell Boeing 777 and not Lear
jets.
Ian
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