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MmeGigs -> RE: Florida finally figured out voting problems (7/7/2008 5:35:29 PM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: cyberdude611
The state has now gone to the optical scanners in all 67 counties.
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The advantage over electronic voting is this provides a paper trail and the ballots can be recounted by hand if necessary, and ballots rejected by the computer may be able to be easily determined by human inspection. Computers can count the ballots very fast giving results within an hour or two after polls close.
This is what we use in my county. I don't think that this is uniform throughout the state, but it should be. Folks around here were kind of bemused when all of the problems arose in 2000 and with all of the subsequent controversy about electronic voting. Optical scanners are electronic voting. We'd been using optical scanners for years, and didn't understand why folks were looking to reinvent the wheel in such an unsatisfactory way - with results that couldn't be independently verified.
I get a big paper ballot and a black marker. The ballots aren't at all confusing, but just in case, they keep sample ballots on display at the Govt Center as soon as they're available, and at the poll I have the opportunity to look it over and ask for clarification before I go into the booth. I connect the ends of the arrows and put my ballot in a reusable sleeve to protect my privacy, go to a scanning machine that sucks the ballot out of the sleeve and counts my vote. If I screw it up the machine will spit it back out, they put it through a shredder and give me a new ballot. When I'm done and my ballot is accepted I give the sleeve to a little old lady who slaps an "I Voted" sticker on me.
They work well from the tabulating end, too. the voters just don't have to deal with the electronics, which causes a heck of a lot less confusion for voters and makes the election judges' job a lot easier. I don't know how things are elsewhere, but our election judges, while wonderful people, are not chosen because they are tech savvy. The optical scanners don't need much technical babysitting. The elections clerks have an absolutely reliable paper trail because they have the original ballots. If there is a problem with a particular machine, they can recount the votes from just that machine rather than from the whole poling place, because the ballots stay with the machine until the data is retrieved. The information is available within a very short time after the polls close, and recounts are not difficult and are rarely if ever challenged.
The most obvious advantage to optical scanning that I can see is that it has all kinds of built in redundancy at no extra cost. There are multiple scanning machines at every polling place, so it's not a big deal if one goes down. If the power goes out at my polling place, I can still vote - as long as there's enough light I can make marks on paper. If the computers go out they can still count my vote. If I'm using touch screens and my vote only exists in a computer, or the paper trail relies on a computer printed receipt, I've got all kinds of new possible points of failure that could potentially stand in the way of my vote being counted.
I think that optical scanner ballots should be universal.
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