I voted on a optical scan with paper trail. n/t

[dave502d]

[patrice]

1. Does that mean that you have a copy of your ballot?

Or is it just a receipt? Or what?

[mduffy31]

4. No, but there is an actual ballot that can be hand counted

[patrice]

6. Okay, so it tabulates electronically AND provides a paper ballot

that you put in a box, right?

[mduffy31]

9. Yes

It will electronically scan the circles that you have filled in like a scan-tron sheet that I used for tests in college, then the paper ballot that you marked on is stored in a locked box so there is an actual paper ballot that could be hand counted if necessary and provides a paper trail. I don't understand why this isn't the way to go.

[patrice]

11. The election reform folks I know say that it's the best compromise.

I personally wouldn't mind waiting a few weeks to count the paper ballots by hand, but then I'm not "normal".

[kath]

12. It wouldn't take a few weeks. In Canada, ballots are hand-counted, *at the precinct*,

in full view of observers from all parties. Results are available in hours.
THAT system is the way to go. Open, unhackable, verifiable. No ballot boxes to get dumped in the river or otherwise disappear on the way to headquarters - they're all counted at the polling place.

[patrice]

14. And extremely good for civic community building!

I love the idea of people coming together to count and observe the count. It could/should be a national holiday.

It would be IDEAL really!

[demobabe]

7. Paper ballot with optical scan

You fill in ovals on a ballot which is fed into a computer which tallies the votes. You get a little stub to take home with you with a ballot number on it that corresponds to your ballot.

You do not retain a copy of your ballot.

Optiscan machines can be hacked just like all electronic voting machines, and the vote can be manipulated after all the votes have been counted, but you do have all the physical ballots to recount.

[Neurotica]

2. me too

What amazed me is that the line for the lone electronic touch screen machine was about 12 people long. Meanwhile, the paper ballot booths were nearly empty.

I feel pretty good about the optical scan machine for the fact that there is a paper trail.

[TahitiNut]

3. I hate it when the toilet paper sticks to my shoe.

Soooo embarrassing. :dunce:

[BrotherBuzz]

8. Bad, bad, bad TahitiNut

:thumbsup:

:rofl:

[etherealtruth]

5. I did too

[goforit]

10. So did I! I know that 50% at my presinct are voting scan verses the touchscreen

[elocs]

13. Optical scan with a paper ballot is the most accurate voting system

widely available. There is no perfect system--not even paper ballots alone. Just ask some voters in Mexico. Where there is an ill will, there is a way. Also, the U.S. has many millions of more voters than Canada.

[kath]

15. well, in Canada, I'd suspect that there are probably roughly the same number of

voters *per precinct* or polling place. Just recruit vote counters and multi-partisan observers from the local community. There's no good reason why their system couldn't work here. Such a system also fosters community involvement in the process, as someone noted above.

Sure, there can be some cheating even in such a system. But it would be very difficult to do *large-scale* cheating at anything even approaching the order of magnitude of the cheating which can be accomplished with computerized systems.

When the votes are counted AT THE POLLING PLACE you lose the problem of ballot boxes disappearing, plus stuffing the ballot box becomes more difficult when the box is in plain view of observers from different political parties for the entire day, up to and including the counting.

The old pen-and-paper system is also not subject to mechanical failure or computer failure or power outages. Plus many more voters can be accomodated at one time, if enough of those inexpensive little cardboard voting desks are made available.

[kath]

16. Re; optical scan systems - the software in the central tabulator is very vulnerable to

hacking and corruption (and is often a Diebold product, IIRC). Unless there is random auditing (via handcount) of a certain number of precincts, it's very hard to know if the counting is done accurately.