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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.'"

3 of 143 comments (clear)

  1. What's wrong with paper by Ckwop · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I like this move. With all the diebold problems and election computers found to be wanting, nobody has really addressed the question: "What is wrong with paper in the first place?"

    Sure, it's slow to count but not overly so. While US ballots are more complicated than UK ballots they still take just over a day to count. If you can't wait that long, you're just impatient.

    If you want a quick answer, just use exit polls. Until Bush's election fraud, these were a reliable way of having an idea of who has won the election.

    We already have a well evolved security procedure for handling paper ballots. Why are people so quick to throw that away a proven solution and to try a totally closed computer system off a random vendor to solve a problem that never really existed anyway? I'll leave the answer is an exercise to the reader.

    Simon

  2. Re:ink by Gadget_Guy · · Score: 3, Insightful

    These machines will jam or run out of ink with no geeks around to fix it.

    I don't know how they cope in offices around the world without a geek on hand to change their printer toners. If even my 70 year old mother can fix paper jams in complicated photocopiers then it shouldn't be too hard to find people to keep the machines running.

    The geeks aren't supposed to be changing toners, they should be making printers that are easy enough for the common pleb to change without assistance. If this can't be done then the geeks have failed.

  3. Re:ink by Xaositecte · · Score: 3, Insightful

    There's a reason geeks haven't made easy-to-use tech to fill every niche yet.

    Job Security.