I thought accuracy and speed were supposed to be advantages as well.
The paper version would be reviewed, for example, when there is a good reason to think the electronic version is inaccurate.
-FrL-
I wouldn’t mind seeing the device you feed the paper reciept into keep a separate tally of the votes.
If the two tallies differ by more than a certain percentage, it would trigger an automatic recount of the paper receipts because something has gone wrong.
The electronic portion is to have access to quick election results (as long as no recounts are triggered) and also to have all the features that allow blind/disabled voters to vote privately.
I don’t understand why more places don’t use optical scan ballots. We’ve had them here for years. (Relatively) cheap, efficient, and effective.
You get a paper ballot and a pen. You mark your votes. You put the ballot in the machine and it gets scanned and added to the total. Actual ballot drops into the lockbox.
I’ve never seen a confusing ballot nor heard of anyone being confused by how to vote. The names are printed in a reasonably-sized type and next to each name is an arrow to be filled in. (Printed on the ballot is: == ==> CANDIDATE NAME. You fill in the arrow pointing to your vote.) The most confusing part of the ballot is the “straight ticket” voting, and they’re talking about dropping that.
When the ballot is scanned, it is rejected if there is any problem (e.g., two votes for the same issue or race) and a pollworker comes over to help you. S/he explains what you did wrong and you get a new ballot.
The only thing you can really do that won’t be caught immediately is to not fill in a vote. Empty votes are just skipped, as not everyone votes on every issue/race. If you missing voting on your pet issue, that’s your bad. (For example, today’s ballot was an oversized, double-sided page, with around 15 separate races for different offices, plus four state questions. I have voted in elections that had more than one ballot because they wouldn’t fit on the single page. Other elections have had a single-column, quarter-size ballot with only a few questions.)
I’m not familiar with the exact details of how votes are totalled from the machines, but we generally have the results within a few hours of the polls closing.
The paper ballots are easy to read manually; recounts are generally completed within a day or two. I’ve seen at least one recount requested in almost every election (I think they do automatic recounts if the opposing totals are within a certain range of each other) and I’ve never heard of a recount significantly changing the results.
I don’t see how electronic voting helps blind voters, unless it’s a voice system, in which case it’s not any more private (and possibly less, depending on the setup of the polling place) than getting assistance from a pollworker or bringing a friend. Certainly our ballots are printed in a large enough print that even very elderly people don’t seem to have a problem, so I think they’d be fine for most limited-vision voters.
I can see that certain disabled individuals could vote more easily with a touchscreen than with our system, but I don’t think the numbers of those voters are sufficient to merit changing systems.