4 ms·

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

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

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