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Here is the friggin' voting system that we, the people, need to demand.
The voting machine is a touch-screen model, which you use in the normal fashion with the normal information displayed. Name, nickname, party, incumbent status, and office being running for. Referendums, voter initiatives, constitutional amendments, etc.
After you pick all of your candidates, you are taken to a summary screen, which displayes the names and parties of the people you've picked and how you voted on the initiatives.
If you like what you see, you press a button marked "Print Preliminary Ballot", and a laser printer behind the console prints out a piece of standard-sized paper with all the races and names you voted for. The ballot slides out of the printer and down a chute and stops at a backlit window next to the screen. At this point, you can physically review the ballot, complete with time, date, precinct, district, county, state, ballot serial number and machine serial number stamps on it. If you like it, you hit "Approve", and the ballot slides into a chute with a manual lever and a message comes up (and perhaps a beep) reminding the voter to press the manual dump lever. Pressing the manual lever dumps the ballot into a clear plastic box which is also visible from the booth.
But, if you see a mistake, you press the "Reject" button on the screen. A message will display telling you to take a marker and fill in a circle on the ballot through an appropriate hole in the glass. Once you do that, you press "Discard", and the ballot drops out into an external tray, where you remove it and wave over a poll worker (a discreet light and audible tone at the top of the booth may help). The poll worker and the voter both sign it and date it, then clip a corner and put it the "reject" box. The poll worker then enters a PIN in the machine confirming the ballot was rejected, and the voter can then select the vote(s) to change and print out a new ballot.
The ballots are then hand-counted, which would not be a problem because the ballots would be written in plain English. No hanging chads or other bull.
I would appreciate the smart and savvy DUers to look at this system. I think it's tamper proof.
If you press "Candidate A" but "Candidate B" prints out, you can reject it and try again, and if it keeps happening the poll workers can fix it immediately.
If you press "Candidate A" but "Candidate B" prints out, you press "Reject", mark the ballot, but then the machine tries to dump it in the ballot box instead of the external tray, the manual lever will hold the ballot in abayence until a poll worker can remove the voided ballot.
If you press "Candidate A" but "Candidate B" prints out, you press "Reject", but the machine tries to dump the ballot in the box before you can use the marker on it, the mechanical lever will still hold the ballot in abayance until the poll worker can remove it and it can be properly voided.
The system is sealed, so people can't print out ballots at home and stuff the box. Poll workers can't add votes after the fact because the ballots have a date and time stamp. A hundred ballots cast in three minutes on one machine is cause for investigation and rejection. If one machine has an unusually high number of ballots cast compared to other machines, that will also signal a red flag. The ballots can also be serialized, so if there are ballots cast where the serial numbers don't match the time sequence, they can be discarded.
The voting machines would also not keep any sort of electronic tally, either. And no vote-counting machines, either. You gotta sit there with a stack of paper and slog through it yourself. It's once every two years, deal with it!
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