I meandered up to the District 3 police station today for early voting, and by the time I wondered why I was standing in line so long, I was almost to the desk.
The machines available there were Sequoia AVC, with printer.
The ballot items appeared over 11 separate screens. When I touched the screen, a check mark appeared on the candidate/issue, and the other choices went away. The screen was very sensitive, but when I brushed the screen where I didn’t mean to, all I had to do was touch the check mark, and the other choices reappeared.
After I had voted and nexted my way through, the screen displayed my votes (over three separate screens), and asked me if I wanted to go back to voting. When, at that point, I nexted, it printed a paper receipt, under plastic, to my left. The reciept was readable with a little head movement (I wear bifocals), and only printed one page at a time, waiting for me to next on the touchscreen for it to print the next page.
After the third page, when I hit next, it offered me the option to go back to voting or to “Cast Ballot”.
Only voting machines I’ve dealt with (including New Mexico, Georgia, and New York) are those huge blue metal ones with the screencurtain. You swing a lever one direction and the curtain closes; pop down metal levers by your choices and when you’re done swing the lever the other way and it records your vote, pops all the little individual vote-levers back to the neutral position, and opens the curtain. Far from electronic, I’m not entirely sure they even have electricity.
Well, about half of my pages were on whether I wished to retain a judge in office. You probably don’t have that in Australia. Most of the rest were on various state or city referendums, which are overloaded lately.
My actual votes were on: Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, State Treasurer, my federal House of Representatives member, my State House of Representatives member, 21 judge retentions, 14 state referendums, and 2 city referendums.
You’ve just answered a question I was about to post before I posted it: can these machines operate well for issues more complex than [channelling the Wizard of Id - where my knowledge of voting machines comes from in its entirety] “King” or “Other Guy”. Now I know they can, but am still wondering how. What’s the interface like? How do luddites go?
As for voting for public officials who aren’t actual politicians, that is very alien to me, and really goes against the grain of what a person like a judge should be. Not a criticism (well, maybe subconsciously it is, but it’s not intended to be), but it weirds me out.
We have early voting as well in Nevada, and it sounds like the same voting machine…same paper ballot prints out after the computer does its thing, so at least there is a backup…so, yeah, I feel it is about as safe as it gets…then again, you never know who is doing the tallying and if they like the results, don’t bother to check the paper to verify.
And those sneaky Aussies with their paper and pencil…what happens if you put a check instead of an X, or if you underline, or circle a name, or if you…well, we used to do that here, but the Democrats won when that happened, and now we have computers designed by cronies of Bush…and you can see how that has worked out.
My home county used to use the “big gray machines o’ freedom” (thanks, Mehitabel), but some years back they switched to a type of optical scan where the voter connects the had and tail of an arrow. In theory (I’ve never seen it happen), the machine will reject a ballot which can’t be read, and a poll worker will void it and give the voter a replacement. So I’m pretty comfortable with the system.
Last primary I was asked if I wanted to try a machine very similar to the one Frank described, and had no problem with it outside of the fact that it expressed outrage that I declined to “pick a party” (inside joke to SoW voters). I’m not quite as confident with it since I’m concerned that it would be easier to sneak some initial skulduggery past it, but I’d prefer it to the alternatives I’ve heard horror stories about.
Every place I’ve voted so far has been pen and balllot.
==…==> 1st guy
==…==> 2nd guy
And so on. Where the … is you draw a line with a special pen - similar to a Sharpie - completing the arrow. The entire ballot - heavier than plain paper, lighter than light cardboard backing of a candybar - is dropped into an OCR.
In the September primary I voted on a touchscreen machine. Didn’t worry much about it, because who would both want and be in a position to rig a primary? But for the general election – I really wish the thing would print out a paper copy of my choices, which would be displayed under glass for my inspection, then drop into a sealed box, available if a recount is called for.
I feel ripped off now- I only got one piece of paper. Quite disappointing. At least I got to lick an envelope, though; Absentee ballot, donchaknow. Actually, it’s mail-in ballots all the time, because I live in Oregon.
On a slightly off-topic note, does anyone know how the news media decides how to call Oregon on election nights without exit polls?
I’m in Georgia, I vote on those freakin’ Diebold machines. No ballot per se, just touch the pen to the right place on the screen and confirm that you voted for whom you intended to. I hate them. I don’t know who the HELL the machine is actually recorded as having gone to.
I used to use those paper punch ballots. Much better. Maybe they could deliberately miscount it, but it would take a lot more effort to cheat that way, and be a lot more detectable.
Doesn’t matter anyway. My district is freakin’ Republican Central. Fuckers.
Don’t know yet: the last time it was the old fashioned mechanical voting machines that do the job just fine and should have been used as an option everywhere.
