4 ms·

Minnesota has a better system. You fill in a paper ballot using a pen, and the paper ballot gets optically scanned. Besides avoiding any issues (real or imagin

Minnesota has a better system. You fill in a paper ballot using a pen, and the paper ballot gets optically scanned. Besides avoiding any issues (real or imagined) with touchscreens, it makes it extremely cheap to stand up more polling places with more booths, since only one tabulator is needed; the booths themselves can just be little standing tables with privacy protectors.

autoexec 9mo ago
This really is the best way to do it. Scantron gives fast results and you get a paper physical record which shows the actual ballot exactly as it was presented to the voter along with what their vote was.
- dylan604 9mo ago
  <devilsAdvocate>How many people spend time making their selections on the computer, then compare every single selection on the print out? Deniers could say the computer randomly prints votes to skew in certain candidate/party direction knowing not everyone would catch it.</devilsAdvocate> all it would take is one person saying their printed ballot does not match their specific selection, and the whole thing would become chaos.
  - zerocrates 9mo ago
    The person you replied to is talking about ballots that are just on paper, filled in with a pen, and scanned. So there's no computer making printouts.
    - dylan604 9mo ago
      Same but different issues. Now you have to know that the dots were filled in correctly to be readable. Having someone make an obvious attempt at selection but not readable by the reader is also problematic. No reason to not count their vote. You may laugh about not being able to do it correctly, but it happens. Only if the scantron shows that each position on the ballot was counted and the voter is not allowed to leave until the person monitoring the scan confirms with the voter their ballot was scanned would this give confidence. Any issues with the scan, and the voter is allowed to correct the issue. There should never be an issue of reading the ballot by the scanner as an acceptable outcome. of course, all of this is assuming in person voting only
      - autoexec 9mo ago
        Checking each ballot for completeness sounds like a good improvement to the system. Right now people are just expected to mark carefully and double-check their work before feeding their ballot into the machine and request a new ballot if they mess up. It might slow things down a little bit, but making sure that the machine can detect a vote for each race/question (even if it's just "Abstain") would make sure people didn't forget to fill out something and help prevent the fill-in-the-bubble equivalent of hanging chads.
        dylan604 9mo ago
        I like the idea that "abstain" should be an option for each position on the ballot to remove the ambiguity of it just being skipped mistakenly. Require every position on the ballot to need a response from the voter regardless. That would definitely simplify the tally process even if it does require the voter to go back to fill in additional spots. Better to be right on even if it takes 30 more seconds.
  - autoexec 9mo ago
    We agree. Don't use computers. Scantron is only there to get a fast count for the news agencies. Manual counting of physical paper ballots would still be done anyway.
    - dylan604 9mo ago
      To manually count by hand every ballot would mean not finding out a complete tally well until after Jan 20. When election day and inauguration day was selected, the number of ballots to count were a mere fraction of today's count. Manually counting votes is so error prone that I'd have less confidence in it than a scantron type of ballot. At this point, I'm more in favor of giving each voter a ball/bead/chip to drop into a bucket for each position on the ballot. After checking in, you go to each position to receive your one token. If you don't visit a position, you do not get a token to pass to someone else. Tallying the votes could be as quick as weighing the bucket as the weight of the bucket/token will be known. Each election can change size/weight/color of tokens to be unique. If the weights total an irrational weight, it would be deemed suspect and a hand sort of the tokens can be done to find the odd token.
      - autoexec 9mo ago
        Hand counts are kind of obnoxious but they can't be beat for transparency. There's no reason it has to be done at once either. Ideally people would be able to vote over several days and counting can start right away. Balls/tokens aren't a bad idea either though, but it sounds like people pocketing a ball/token would force a manual count even if they kept them since the total weight of all buckets combined would be off. I'd also worry about people bringing in heavier or lighter balls/tokens but the bigger risk would be poll workers handing out heavier or lighter balls/tokens to specific people (or types of people) because it'd be easier to make sure the weights would add up in the end. Maybe we could force everyone to vote at every position (which should have an abstain option) then have the machine check the weight of every ball/token as it was inserted, and verify that one but only one was inserted, before it fell into the selected bucket?
        dylan604 9mo ago
sjm-lbm 9mo ago
This was common in Texas, but becomes challenging when one polling place serves voters that might have different elections to vote for - say, at a polling place on the line between two school districts or something like that. You can't just print one sheet of paper, and it to everyone, and call it a day. Toss in a few different jurisdictions that don't directly overlay each other, and the number of combinations become nontrivial. (the machines used in Texas vary by county, in my county we use Hart InterCivic machines that are touchscreen but produce a paper trail - honestly I think it works well)
- velcrovan 9mo ago
  That just sounds like you don’t have enough polling places.
  - sjm-lbm 9mo ago
    To be fair, that is true. Texas is around the 5th most difficult state to vote in per the Cost of Voting Index.
nonethewiser 9mo ago
>Minnesota has a better system. You fill in a paper ballot using a pen, and the paper ballot gets optically scanned. >Besides avoiding any issues (real or imagined) with touchscreens, Wait... I don't think these are the complaints being made against internet voting at all. The problem is with a computer counting and reporting it, right? Centralized, less transparent, etc. I dont view writing my vote on paper and scanning it to be paper voting if it's just immediately fed into a computer.
- zugi 9mo ago
  > I dont view writing my vote on paper and scanning it to be paper voting if it's just immediately fed into a computer. The paper ballots are retained for recounts, and most places with this system automatically recount a random subset of the paper ballots to ensure it matches the computer totals. This guards against both shenanigans and mistakes. For security the scanning machines are not networked! A person carries around a little SD card (not USB as it's too hackable) to collect the totals. The paper ballot with in-precinct immediate scanning system is the best system I've seen. It reports results quickly and leaves a full paper trail for recounts and accountability.
  - wesgarrison 9mo ago
    They are USB on the machines we use. That said, that’s not a concern to me. The machine also prints a paper tally that goes with it to verify. We used sealed bags so they can’t be messed with in transit. They tabulate the results and compare it to the total from the tape. Personally, I wish there was a hash of the results that would make it simple to say “yep, that’s the same” but practically that’s not necessary. A second copy of the receipt goes back separately with the paper ballots. Same sealing and chain of custody handoffs. I like the electronic ballot marking device. I can understand the argument that they’re not worth the cost, though.

autoexec 9mo ago

This really is the best way to do it. Scantron gives fast results and you get a paper physical record which shows the actual ballot exactly as it was presented to the voter along with what their vote was.

dylan604 9mo ago
<devilsAdvocate>How many people spend time making their selections on the computer, then compare every single selection on the print out? Deniers could say the computer randomly prints votes to skew in certain candidate/party direction knowing not everyone would catch it.</devilsAdvocate> all it would take is one person saying their printed ballot does not match their specific selection, and the whole thing would become chaos.
- zerocrates 9mo ago
  The person you replied to is talking about ballots that are just on paper, filled in with a pen, and scanned. So there's no computer making printouts.
  - dylan604 9mo ago
    Same but different issues. Now you have to know that the dots were filled in correctly to be readable. Having someone make an obvious attempt at selection but not readable by the reader is also problematic. No reason to not count their vote. You may laugh about not being able to do it correctly, but it happens. Only if the scantron shows that each position on the ballot was counted and the voter is not allowed to leave until the person monitoring the scan confirms with the voter their ballot was scanned would this give confidence. Any issues with the scan, and the voter is allowed to correct the issue. There should never be an issue of reading the ballot by the scanner as an acceptable outcome. of course, all of this is assuming in person voting only
    - autoexec 9mo ago
      Checking each ballot for completeness sounds like a good improvement to the system. Right now people are just expected to mark carefully and double-check their work before feeding their ballot into the machine and request a new ballot if they mess up. It might slow things down a little bit, but making sure that the machine can detect a vote for each race/question (even if it's just "Abstain") would make sure people didn't forget to fill out something and help prevent the fill-in-the-bubble equivalent of hanging chads.
      - dylan604 9mo ago
        I like the idea that "abstain" should be an option for each position on the ballot to remove the ambiguity of it just being skipped mistakenly. Require every position on the ballot to need a response from the voter regardless. That would definitely simplify the tally process even if it does require the voter to go back to fill in additional spots. Better to be right on even if it takes 30 more seconds.
- autoexec 9mo ago
  We agree. Don't use computers. Scantron is only there to get a fast count for the news agencies. Manual counting of physical paper ballots would still be done anyway.
  - dylan604 9mo ago
    To manually count by hand every ballot would mean not finding out a complete tally well until after Jan 20. When election day and inauguration day was selected, the number of ballots to count were a mere fraction of today's count. Manually counting votes is so error prone that I'd have less confidence in it than a scantron type of ballot. At this point, I'm more in favor of giving each voter a ball/bead/chip to drop into a bucket for each position on the ballot. After checking in, you go to each position to receive your one token. If you don't visit a position, you do not get a token to pass to someone else. Tallying the votes could be as quick as weighing the bucket as the weight of the bucket/token will be known. Each election can change size/weight/color of tokens to be unique. If the weights total an irrational weight, it would be deemed suspect and a hand sort of the tokens can be done to find the odd token.
    - autoexec 9mo ago
      Hand counts are kind of obnoxious but they can't be beat for transparency. There's no reason it has to be done at once either. Ideally people would be able to vote over several days and counting can start right away. Balls/tokens aren't a bad idea either though, but it sounds like people pocketing a ball/token would force a manual count even if they kept them since the total weight of all buckets combined would be off. I'd also worry about people bringing in heavier or lighter balls/tokens but the bigger risk would be poll workers handing out heavier or lighter balls/tokens to specific people (or types of people) because it'd be easier to make sure the weights would add up in the end. Maybe we could force everyone to vote at every position (which should have an abstain option) then have the machine check the weight of every ball/token as it was inserted, and verify that one but only one was inserted, before it fell into the selected bucket?
      - dylan604 9mo ago

sjm-lbm 9mo ago

This was common in Texas, but becomes challenging when one polling place serves voters that might have different elections to vote for - say, at a polling place on the line between two school districts or something like that. You can't just print one sheet of paper, and it to everyone, and call it a day. Toss in a few different jurisdictions that don't directly overlay each other, and the number of combinations become nontrivial. (the machines used in Texas vary by county, in my county we use Hart InterCivic machines that are touchscreen but produce a paper trail - honestly I think it works well)

velcrovan 9mo ago
That just sounds like you don’t have enough polling places.
- sjm-lbm 9mo ago
  To be fair, that is true. Texas is around the 5th most difficult state to vote in per the Cost of Voting Index.

nonethewiser 9mo ago

>Minnesota has a better system. You fill in a paper ballot using a pen, and the paper ballot gets optically scanned. >Besides avoiding any issues (real or imagined) with touchscreens, Wait... I don't think these are the complaints being made against internet voting at all. The problem is with a computer counting and reporting it, right? Centralized, less transparent, etc. I dont view writing my vote on paper and scanning it to be paper voting if it's just immediately fed into a computer.

zugi 9mo ago
> I dont view writing my vote on paper and scanning it to be paper voting if it's just immediately fed into a computer. The paper ballots are retained for recounts, and most places with this system automatically recount a random subset of the paper ballots to ensure it matches the computer totals. This guards against both shenanigans and mistakes. For security the scanning machines are not networked! A person carries around a little SD card (not USB as it's too hackable) to collect the totals. The paper ballot with in-precinct immediate scanning system is the best system I've seen. It reports results quickly and leaves a full paper trail for recounts and accountability.
- wesgarrison 9mo ago
  They are USB on the machines we use. That said, that’s not a concern to me. The machine also prints a paper tally that goes with it to verify. We used sealed bags so they can’t be messed with in transit. They tabulate the results and compare it to the total from the tape. Personally, I wish there was a hash of the results that would make it simple to say “yep, that’s the same” but practically that’s not necessary. A second copy of the receipt goes back separately with the paper ballots. Same sealing and chain of custody handoffs. I like the electronic ballot marking device. I can understand the argument that they’re not worth the cost, though.