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Florida Election Ballots to be Printed On-Demand

Posted by Zonk on from the love-the-smell-of-a-fresh-ballot dept.

davidwr writes "The St. Petersburg, FL, Times reports that Florida is going back to paper ballots, but with a twist. They are printing the ballots on-demand, right there at the polling booth. This isn't machine-assisted voting where a touch-screen fills in your printed ballot for you. It's just a way to save printing costs and reduce paper waste. 'Without ballot on demand, poll workers at 13 early Hillsborough voting sites would need to stockpile stacks of every possible ballot type. With ballot on demand, poll workers can print out a person's distinct ballot type when he or she arrives to vote.'"

6 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. For your added convenience by antifoidulus · · Score: 4, Funny

    They will be pre-filled in for the Republican candidate. To save you the time of thinking that your vote will actually be counted towards the candidate you intend to vote for.

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    Monstar L
    1. Re:For your added convenience by LaughingCoder · · Score: 3, Funny

      ... and if you are in the military, they will be printed with disappearing ink.

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      The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
  2. Money-making opportunity by Thunderstruck · · Score: 4, Funny

    This is a really great idea. I really, really great idea. This is the kind of "duh" stuff that all of our modern technology is supposed to help fix.

    You know what would be an even better idea? Make these ballot printers with a special, proprietary ink cartridge. This would help prevent counterfeit ballots. Of course, since you can't let these machines break down, the cartidges would probably have to have an internal sensor that shuts down the printer when the ink level gets low. Maybe, just to be safe, they would have to kick in when about 60% of the ink is gone. We need to protect the voters, after all. ...and really, how many tax-payers pay attention to the money their government spends on ink?

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    Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
    1. Re:Money-making opportunity by Minwee · · Score: 3, Funny

      I think you're missing the point.

      There are already several companies making $8000 / gallon specialty ink distributed in highly secure cartridges tied to specific printers and designed to self-destruct before they have used 50% of their contents.

      You don't need a government contract to buy them. All you need to do is go to Staples.

  3. Re:Our new hanging chads. by VGPowerlord · · Score: 2, Funny

    PC Load Letter?! WTF does that mean?!

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    GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
  4. This is Florida by stimuli · · Score: 2, Funny

    Speaking as a Floridian, I think folks are missing the obvious point here: this is Florida, and we'll certainly screw it up.