Ken,
Unsolicited comments welcome. I do agree with most of the points in your
message. I do not look forward to making it work. However, the
counties are required to adopt an ADA compliant fix at the precinct level. Most
of those that have our OS system are going to go with a blended system, at least
in the near term.
Many
have only recently purchased our OS and trained their staff, voters, and
pollworkers. They have been assured that it will work in conjunction with
our TS to satisfy ADA. I doubt they will
nullify that expenditure and make themselves look * by quickly
replacing it with TS (unless we offer them some very appealing incentives).
Also, many of our older customers do not want to leave the OS world, and they
will only purchase the TS as forced to.
Hopefully, the ADA requirements and the concerns you point out about
maintaining two systems will lead them all down the path to full TS. A few are
already looking in that direction. But, blended
systems are here for a while at least. If we make it work for them (no
fun in the support world), then they will likely stay with us if/when
they go full TS. If our blended system has major problems, they will likely
still go full TS, but with another vendor.
Mark
There has never been
even a small-scale test of this kind, to my knowledge.
My unsolicited two
cents is that this is a crazy way to run an election. Expecting
jurisdictions to train for and administer two systems is just nuts. It
is the worst of a paper-based election with the worst of an electronic
election. I wouldn’t worry too much about whether GEMS can receive
results from two systems simultaneously. Even if that were the case, we
could always fix GEMS. I’d be worried about whether poll workers can
send them.
Ken
-----Original
Message----- From:
owner-support@dieboldes.com [mailto:owner-support@dieboldes.com] On Behalf Of Mark Earley Sent: Thursday, January 23, 2003 4:31
PM To: Support Subject: AVOS/TS blended system
uploads
With
the new ADA requirements facing our OS customers, they will likely be knocking
on our door to purchase TS units to compliment their existing OS systems with
one TS unit in each precinct - coexisting with the OS units in a blended
system. While there are some problems with programming such a system (namely
needing to have another Vote Center category created for the TS units), these
are hurdles that can be managed (I guess they can - does anyone have
thoughts on this?). My bigger concern is handling the uploading of both TS and
OS results via modem into the GEMS server.
What
are the known issues relating to upload? I know that TS uses RAS
while OS uses regular serial com ports, thus the need for separate modem
banks. Can GEMS receive modem uploads from both OS and TS units at the same
time? Has this been tested in any kind of a medium to large scale test? Does
anyone have any experience with receiving both TS and OS modem
uploads?
Mark
Earley
850
422-2100 - office/fax
850
322-3226 – cell
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