Psst. Wanna buy some 40-year-old voting machines -- cheap?

Probably not -- unless you're the city Board of Elections. As the entire country
 rapidly modernizes its balloting procedures, New York is once again showing that\
 our idea of election modernization is buying other states' old voting machines
 before they're sent to the scrap yard.

The latest deal calls for New York City to buy nearly 300 voting machines -- the
 famed Shoup 3.2, which traces its lineage back to a Thomas Edison patent -- from
 six rural counties in Georgia.

"Of course we're buying them from Georgia," said Joe Gentile, deputy director of the
 Board of Elections. "Where do you want me to get them from, Albania?"

Don't blame Gentile; his hands are tied. The Shoup 3.2 is one of only two voting
 machines approved for use by the State of New York. And it has not been
 manufactured since 1962.

In order to maintain the city's creaky 7,100 voting machines until New York State
 approves a new voting system, the Board of Elections must buy Shoup 3.2's whenever
 -- wherever -- they become available and cannibalize them for parts.

Georgia is happy to get rid of them, said Donald "Hoppy" Royston, election
 superintendent in Madison County, which is selling us 45 machines. "Our secretary
 of state doesn't like those machines," Royston said. "She wanted to dump 'em in the
 ocean to make artificial reefs."

But Gentile loves the Shoup 3.2.

"It's the Studebaker of voting machines," he said. "Tell me any other mechanical
 device built 40 years ago that still works. These machines will last as long as I
 will -- and I'm in good health…until I started talking to reporters, anyway. These
 machines are in better shape than I am."

So would you if you had 60 technicians who did nothing but maintain your health.

The good news is that the last time the city played voting machine roulette, 69 of
 the 71 machines we bought from rural North Carolina at $75 a piece worked
 perfectly. The deal was inked before Sept. 11, but after the terrorist attack,
 Bertie County offered to give us the machines for free "in this time of your
 terrible loss."

"I cried when I read their letter," Gentile said. "But it would've been wrong not to
 pay them. They're so poor." But not so poor that they couldn't get new voting
 machines.

Like every other state, New York appointed a blue-ribbon commission after being
 scared straight by Florida. The task force's final report -- almost two months late
 -- will be released after the federal government decides how much it's willing to
 kick in for new machines.

Don't expect the feds to ease our pain; the current proposal calls for $400 million
 to be spent nationwide. New York State would eat up more than half of that alone.

So until then, we buy old machines from the rural south.

"It's funny when you think about it," said Gene Russianoff, NYPIRG's peripatetic
 good-government gadfly. "What's next? Are we going to buy school textbooks from
 Mississippi?"

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gersh.kuntzman@verizon.net