General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: Florida Election software Flips Vote: Losers Certified as Winners [View all]Land Shark
(6,346 posts)Voting machines do not produce anything that can be hand counted right away. If they were designed to do so, then the voting machine would be reduced to a glorified pen filling out the ballot FOR YOU. Since people's eyes when scanning tend to see what they think SHOULD be there rather than what IS THERE (which is why we all can miss typos and misspellings often-times) the idea of computerized ballot-printers is an exceedingly expensive idea to accomplish very little (just filling out a ballot for someone) and in the end, to the extent to which voters then "approve" the misprinted ballots by casting them, creates a form of fraud that CAN NOT BE OVERCOME because the voter's ballot is the only evidence ever allowed of what the voter's intent was in casting the ballot.
Bottom line is that there's no way for computers to work in this particular area of democracy: filling out/casting ballots. Computers are great for publishing election information and results (on websites) and for many other things. But they are not suitable or democracy-friendly for either filling out ballots or counting them.