Reportedly, San Bernardino County California was one of the first counties in the country to switch to touch-screen machines. We’ve had them for the last few elections. Insert the card to unlock the machine, touch your selections, then watch the roll of paper next to the machine list who you selected, press to confirm, and you’re done. Paper trail, touch-screen convenience.
Two paper ballots, chewed-up pencil. After I filled them out, I folded them in half and dropped each one in a locked wooden box. Then I got on my dinosaur and went home.
Actually I’m quite happy with a paper ballot. They actually had a machine at town hall for the first time, but nobody (including me) wanted to use it. The paper ballot had the advantage that not only did I get to check “NO” next to the referendum on adding a “defense of marriage” amendment to the state constitution :rolleyes: , but I also got to write “HELL NO” next to it. Unfortunately I live in a state full of bigots, and it looks like the thing is going to pass. :mad:
I envy you, Sir or Madam.
Absentee paper ballot (in fact, it’s the only way we can vote here). The ballot choices are very easy to make with large boxes you fill in for the candidates of your choice.
The ballot is also machine-readable with an optical scanner. That means the votes can be tallied by computer with a very easy to read paper trail.
My machine was a paper ballot and a scented marker (licorice!!). Yolo County doesn’t trust touch screen machines at this point.
It was hard to stop sniffing the marker and vote though… may explain why I voted for someone in the Peace and Freedom party.
Nothing to do with logistics – it’s all about partisan vote suppression. The Republicans who control North Carolina make sure that Democratic areas get less money for improvements in voting. Anything they can do to discourage Democratic voters they will.
The inter-link between the lever that opens the curtains, records your vote, and clears the levers for the next voter was one of the mechanical parts that failed most often. And it failed in a bad way – often it would clear the levers, but not record the vote, so the voter had to do it all over again. Which annoyed voters, and some would walk out without voting again.
By disconnecting the lever from the curtain-opening mechanism (which was the most likely part to get stuck), there is less chance for a problem with these machines.
Note that these are all really old machines, have to be hauled around every election, and so need maintenance to keep them working. They haven’t been manufactured for 10 or 20 years now. It’s even getting tough to find a trained mechanic to work on them; they’ve mostly reached retirement age now.
Somebody certainly used it. Republicans in some states set their robo-call machines to call that number continuously, in a denial-of-service attack.
That did result in constant busy signals for a while. But in these days of caller-id, etc. , that can’t be kept secret. But that hardly matters, if it brings the phone lines down during the election.
If you search around online (YouTube and other places), you can find video of some Professors breaking into those “tamper-proof” machines and subverting them. It takes about 4 minutes 40 seconds. And if all the machines in a polling place are networked, breaking into one subverts all of them.
I believe the plastic card is just a ‘key’ to allow access to the machine. It doesn’t record the votes; they are actually recorded inside the machine.
Paper Ballot, electronically scanned as it entered ballot box.
Problem:
It was two sided, something I didn’t realize until later in the day. (why no bond issues?) The poll workers could have mentioned that when they handed it to me.
It was a an 8-1/2" x longer than normal sheet. Since I am an engineer, I subconciously reasoned that it would simplify the scanner a lot to have single sided ballots. So it simply never occured to me to check the back side. Looking at the vote tallys of candidates v. the bond issues, it appears that 10-15% of folks made the same error.
Interesting. I thought I turned it over because I’m an engineer. Maybe I’m just obsessive.
I was given a choice of paper or…no, not that, but touchscreen. After having seen the Robin Williams flick, Man of the Year, last week in which comedian Tom Dodd, played by Robin, becomes the president-elect because of a glitch in the electronic voting program, I chose paper.
Filled in the chosen ovals with the supplied pencil and slipped it into the reader which gobbled it up and recorded the vote-electronically. I did not notice the brand name on either the machine or the pencil.
No spoiler on the flick ref as that plot line is no secret or surprise.