We used Scantron. One of the reasons things moved so quickly was that the polling place was in a bar (OK, a “German-American Community Center” which happened to have a lot of beer taps). They had private voting booths you could wait in line to fill out your ballot in, but if you weren’t concerned about maximizing the privacy of your ballot you could just sit at a table and fill it out.
I will say that I just went back and looked at the original Gallup information … and they didn’t post anything about HRC or Biden’s campaign outreach, either. In fact, Gallup is explicit that they did not poll this question in 2016 or 2020 (scroll about 3/4 of the way down the page to the header “Harris Campaign Reaching More Voters”). I don’t know.
So you’re fighting fascism …in a German beer hall? Sweet.
Sounds like things were moving smoothly, though. I guess there was no putsching and tshoving.
So with the Scantrons … there aren’t significant issues with people marking them up incorrectly? I know the incidence of error ballots is not zero … but is the incidence of error so super-low that it doesn’t really matter?
Three potential error types come to mind: 1) Marking two boxes on the same line, 2) marking a selection too weakly, and 3) stray pen marks. Of course, I am imagining 1980s-style academic Scantron sheets (below). I can imagine a more clearly formatted Scantron sheet for elections that would help mitigate a lot of the errors I’m thinking about.
That’s my experience too. The only thing I would wish for is a confirmation that the machine’s scanned your ballot correctly. In my experience with scantrons, since I vote early in a place with a lot of precincts combined into one for voting purposes, the longest part of the delay is usually printing out my precinct-specific ballot.
The actual voting and scanning process is fast and there are only 2 people manning the scanner, with 8 or more people manning the printing and verifying part.
The worst part this year is they asked for my signature in order to receive my ballot. The poll worker actually made me do it again because she didn’t think it looked enough like my signature on file. Well that’s because at the polling place I had to write it with my finger on a computer screen. No one can make a finger signature look like a paper signature. She approved it the second time. It felt suspiciously like something you could arbitrarily fail or pass someone on depending on how you thought they were going to vote based on their looks and location.
In 1984 and '88 I was part of the team watching the ballots be counted in Santa Clara (Calif.) county. It used those Vote-o-matic cards but unlike Florida they weren’t butterflied. You flipped the page and all of the candidates were listed on the left-hand side only, not both sides like they had.
So far as hanging chad was concerned, the ballot inspectors would pluck it off if it was hanging by only one corner, or two corners that were on the same side. Only one loose corner or two that were diagonally opposite would get ironed flat. I did see one ballot that had no punch-outs at all, just a bunch of bumps up. The voter had inserted the card into the machine backwards and must not have looked at it at all before handing it in.
Yes, in Corpus Christi. It sounds like the change was a state wide thing. Although the sheet we got was the size of a regular sheet of notebook paper, not especially large.
Do… Do you think this is what a ballot looks like…?
It’s not even close.
Here is an example of a ballot in my state:
Mine is similar, except if you make a mistake you are supposed to ask an official for a fresh ballot, not mark a line through your mistake.
It’s all very clear and easy to read. Nothing like that cheap generic Scantron.
Yes? That, to me, is a “Scantron”. This state hasn’t had paper ballots in a long, long time. When I started voting, it was levers – no paper. Maybe in the 1970s or earlier.
EDIT: Your image of a 2024 ballot does confirm my suspicion that a more suitable Scantron format is adopted for elections.
It seems like what we have in Georgia is different than what you folks are describing, in a good way.
First you complete the ballot on a computer touchscreen; then print it on the adjacent printer; then take that page to a scanner where you feed it in, wait about 5 seconds, and get confirmation.
Nothing filled-in by hand, no circles to color, nothing to punch (nothing to hang). Further, the printed ballot is easily human readable (a requirement since you’re supposed to verify it matches your screen selections).
I hated the levers. As hard to “read” as that generic Scantron, and also, an expensive machine that limited thru-put. And no paper trail. The worst of all possible worlds.
I used them for a couple of years in NYC and NJ.
I remain a huge fan of paper ballots.
Yeah, the old generic Scantron sheet you listed reminds me of my old school days. Those were useful when taking a multiple choice test, with dozens or even hundreds of questions with multiple right answers. It would make no sense to use one with that format for a ballot.
That’s fine for clarity and security. But not ideal for thru-put.
Another possible limit is the number of machines to stick your ballot into for counting. I’ve seen a whole mess of booths and only one machine (admittedly, population in the area is low and the line, when there even is one, was moving at a reasonable pace.)
Yeah, there’s two people doing the sign ins. I think maybe there legally has to be, I think there may have to be at least one from each major party. If I’d voted on the day instead of early voting, I think there might have been four, as the nearest village uses the same voting location and same room for two adjacent districts (totalling a few thousand residents between them.) I think each district has its own two officials; but I might be remembering wrong – I know they ask you when you go in; that might be to give you the right legislative ballot, but as they also check your address I think it was to direct you to the right sign-in table. For early voting everybody votes in one place with one set of officials, though there were four or five people, a couple at the table, a couple minding the line in the hall so too many people didn’t come in at once, and one at the counting machine. Oh, and another out by the main entry doors to the county building, to send you the right way. At least two people reminded me to turn my ballot over, and the one at the entry door pointed out a sample ballot (though I’d printed one off online a couple of weeks earlier.)
– my neighbor just came back from on-the-day voting and said it was moderately busy (midafternoon) and going smoothly; which was what both of us had expected. We then had a brief discussion about the importance of everybody being able to vote, including people who disagree with each other; about which we were in total agreement. Neither of us asked how the other had voted (though he’s probably seen my bumper stickers. His car hasn’t got any.)
The insistence on paper ballots came at least as much from the Democratic and third-party sides. In particular because a couple of elections before that, the CEO or president or whatever of the company making a lot of the no-paper-record ballots had come out rather vehemently for the Republican candidate.
– I had POTUS, one US Senator, one House candidate, two-out-of-four judges, one state senator (R unopposed), one state assembly (R unopposed), one county coroner (R unopposed); and, on the back of the ballot, one proposition inserting already-existing-by-state-law civil rights into the state constitution where they’ll be harder to get rid of. (At least, that’s what I, and a fair number of others, think it means. There’s considerable disagreement on the subject; it’s a bit oddly written.) In NY school board, budget, and school propositions including library budget are on a separate ballot at a separate time of year; and village and/or town on yet a third ballot on yet a third schedule.
The first and third, AIUI, would be bounced back at you by the machine as a spoiled ballot; poll workers would destroy that one and give you another. The overly faint one might pass; I think some machines will warn you of an undervote (though allow you to make one) but I skipped the three unopposed R’s and got no warning.
I think one reason they give you a pen is to reduce the overly-faints, as that way nobody should be using a pen that’s hard to read.
Ours don’t do that; but the state does a hand count of a random sample of machines to make sure that what they reported lines up with the hand count. So if somebody were somehow screwing it up, there’d be quite a good chance that it would be found out. What would happen then I don’t know; apparently none of the machines checked have yet produced an obviously improper count.
They told me my finger signature looked just like my paper signature written some 35 years ago. Count me really surprised. My handwriting must have gotten terrible sooner than I thought.
That does seem like a further improvement. I presume they store the printed ballots securely for a couple of years, and random-count an occasional machine to check the scanners are functioning properly?
That sounds like an absolute headache to me. I like doing things at home and dropping it in a mailbox the next time I have an errand to run.
in philly we got the paper things recently. i really miss the old lever and ka chunk machines. you would pull this huge lever and the machine would go ka chunk and the curtains would part.
now they hand you a long page of card stock, you feed it in the machine, make your choices on a touch screen, then touch print. the long page is printed and you view it in a window to be sure it is accurate. then touch vote or you can start again. the long page is then whisked away into the machine, and you fight your way out of the curtain.
the big ka chunk was way more official sounding. they should be able to do a sound effect and curtain opening thing.
msnbc went back to the temple location. paul rudd is handing out water to the people in the 2 hour line.
I’d forgotten the big ka-chunk, and I did indeed like that. I’d go for a Foley Artist in every polling station.
I am used to the electronic machines, that’s what they used in AZ. I was very surprised to find them in WV.
I voted the day after early voting started, no line. Hubs voted around 10am today. No line.
I’ve had a Harris/Walz sign on our front yard for a while. nobody has stolen or defaced it.
I waited until 1500 to start drinkin’, but I’ve been smoking since before I finished my first cup of coffee. Today is the first time in 8 years that I’ve craved tobacco.