4 ms·

Another reason your snark is completely misplaced is that punch ballots are not what people generally mean by hand marked paper ballots. The standard for HMPB i

Another reason your snark is completely misplaced is that punch ballots are not what people generally mean by hand marked paper ballots. The standard for HMPB is pen-marked optically scanned ballots with races and candidates clearly separated and bubbles directly adjacent on the outside edges. The vast majority of states still use HMPB and the vast majority of states use hand marked paper ballots with optical scan and the vast majority have no problem counting ballots [0]. A lot of people opted to mail in ballots in 2020 when they could because of covid concern. Mail-in and drop off ballots shouldn't take much longer to count, but they do because of dumbassery in some states requiring counting on or after election dat. And also vilifying postmark-by causing a delay of approximately 3 days while absentee/mailin ballots are delivered. Postmarking works for official court documents but for some reason "they're stealing our votes!" when you're a losing and shrinking minority. Everyone should be aware that mail-in ballots are going to have a delay and none of the states vote counts are official the day of. That's how we always did it and it worked fine until some asshat decided to attack our elections before they even started. Florida was a hole-punch system that was absolutely terrible. They fixed that. [0] https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_state https://ballotpedia.org/Voting_methods_and_equipment_by_stat...

runako 3y ago
This was the claim to which I was responding: > Then we switched away from paper ballots to e-voting You are objecting to claims neither I nor the OP made: > punch ballots are not what people generally mean by hand marked paper ballots In particular, nobody said anything about how the paper ballots were marked. Absolutely agree with your points that there is a concerted effort to make our elections look illegitimate by e.g. not allowing early/absentee ballots to be counted before Election Day, underfunding elections processes, designing elections so that some areas have incredibly long lines on Election Day, etc.
- daveguy 3y ago
  1) Florida did not switch to e-voting machines. They switched to what most people mean by HMPB - hand marked bubble fill, scanned optically and retained for audits. Most importantly: 2) There is no problem with hand marked paper ballots optically scanned. And those aren't considered e-voting machines where votes are recorded electronically. The whole point of whether hand marked paper is a problem depends on how they are marked (eg NOT punched) and to not acknowledge that is disingenuous. I'm glad we are on the same page with improving efficiencies. Lack of polling places => long lines on election day is particularly egregious.

runako 3y ago

This was the claim to which I was responding: > Then we switched away from paper ballots to e-voting You are objecting to claims neither I nor the OP made: > punch ballots are not what people generally mean by hand marked paper ballots In particular, nobody said anything about how the paper ballots were marked. Absolutely agree with your points that there is a concerted effort to make our elections look illegitimate by e.g. not allowing early/absentee ballots to be counted before Election Day, underfunding elections processes, designing elections so that some areas have incredibly long lines on Election Day, etc.

daveguy 3y ago
1) Florida did not switch to e-voting machines. They switched to what most people mean by HMPB - hand marked bubble fill, scanned optically and retained for audits. Most importantly: 2) There is no problem with hand marked paper ballots optically scanned. And those aren't considered e-voting machines where votes are recorded electronically. The whole point of whether hand marked paper is a problem depends on how they are marked (eg NOT punched) and to not acknowledge that is disingenuous. I'm glad we are on the same page with improving efficiencies. Lack of polling places => long lines on election day is particularly egregious.