Millions of dollars in electronic voting are machines being destroyed in the US

The $3 Billion spent on electronic voting machines after the 2000 Election debacle has gone wrong in so many ways.

Vanishing votes, breakdowns, malfunctions and evidence that the e-voting machines are vulnerable to hackers has caused the problem. The result is warehouses full of unused e-voting equipment, and millions of dollars worth of equipment being sent to the junkyard for pennies on the dollar.

Many states have lost confidence in the machines and have stopped using them, or they are facing lawsuits that make the machines useless.

What to do with this high-tech junkyard is a multimillion-dollar question. One manufacturer offered $1 a piece to take back its ATM-like machines. Some states are offering the devices for sale on eBay and craigslist. Others hope to sell their inventories to Third-World countries or salvage them for scrap.

Setting aside the massive taxpayer boondoggle that e-voting has become, this news is just depressing. It's a shame that we seem to be moving forward technologically on all fronts except with our democracy.

The phone in our pockets are mini-computers, our cars have Bluetooth and voice recognition, and the GPS is now ubiquitous in society. Yet, as advanced as we've become, the US is reverting back to paper ballots and potentially even hanging chads.

I honestly thought we would be past this point by now.