Slashdot Mirror
Florida Literally Scraps Touch-Screen Voting
Kaseijin writes "Florida Governor Charlie Crist is getting his wish. The New York Times reports the state will replace touch-screen voting machines with optical-scan models by July 1, 2008 — the most aggressive timetable of any jurisdiciton rethinking this approach to voting. The touch-screen machines most likely will be sold to other jurisdictions or stripped for parts."
There are enough problems with arguments about whether a vote should be counted or not as it is, in any system. With optical scanning of a ballot paper, surely there will be arguments about whether what the scanner counts as a vote or not is actually the correct definition of what is a vote or not? The voting system is likely to be attacked by people who disagree with its definitions whatever it is.
The main advantage of the optical scanning system is it leaves a paper trail. If there is a dispute at the end of the election, it is possible to manually recount the ballots. Compare with the touch-screen voting, where no independent verification is possible. The ballots are also plain pieces of paper, so there's no issue of hanging chads or dislodging chads during a recount as in certain elections in the past.
Nope. Not on the ones I have used.
1) you fill them out with a special black pen.
2) if you make a mistake, ask for new sheet and start again.
3) you place it into the optical scanner.
4) Green Light - your ballot is correct and you are done.
5) Red Light - you get a new ballot and start again.
Advantages:
Positive and Negative feedback if the ballot is clean and correct.
Voter SEES what is they choose, clearly.
Disadvantages:
Paper pile. But need only until election is confirmed.
You are aware that it was Bush's campaign that filed the first court challenges to the Florida ballots, right?
I'm sure you'll happily apply the entire rest of your comment to Bush now that you know he's the one who caused the inevitable Caesar.
Recursive: Adj. See Recursive.
Since the article says that most of the machines will actually be sent to a scrap heap, yes, it is quite literal. (Merely doing away with touch-screen voting and keeping the machines to use for other purposes would be a figurative scrapping.)
Ballots in the United States are far longer than those in Canada. Have a look for yourself: NIST has a collection of ballots online.
Here's one example: Chicago, Illinois, November 2004. 10 pages of choices, with 15 elected offices, confirmations of 74 judges, and one referendum. We're talking about 1 or 2 orders of magnitude longer than a Canadian ballot.
I do not support unauditable voting computers. I just wanted to explain why the voting problem is much different in the U. S., and give you some idea why the desire for automation is so strong. (I'm Canadian as well.)