Confusing layouts are a problem, but that is easily avoided. In Australia its just a list of names, and a box next to each name. You number them 1 to N. I don't know if I've ever heard a complaint here about ballot confusion or accuracy. Certainly nothing stupid like hanging chads because of some bizarre hole punching device. Keep it simple!
It's not like they have to count them all serially - if there are more votes to count, you hire more people to do the job in parallel. 12 million votes v.s. 120 million votes isn't that much of a deal to scale up. You have 15 times more people for 10 times the votes, for starters.
In Australia it's all paper. You write the numbers in the squares on the ballot sheet, and put the sheet in a box. 15 million people cast their vote and electoral officials count them all by hand, including working out preferences, and we usually get to see the results by bed time. Am I missing something here?
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Confusing layouts are a problem, but that is easily avoided. In Australia its just a list of names, and a box next to each name. You number them 1 to N. I don't know if I've ever heard a complaint here about ballot confusion or accuracy. Certainly nothing stupid like hanging chads because of some bizarre hole punching device. Keep it simple!
It's not like they have to count them all serially - if there are more votes to count, you hire more people to do the job in parallel. 12 million votes v.s. 120 million votes isn't that much of a deal to scale up. You have 15 times more people for 10 times the votes, for starters.
In Australia it's all paper. You write the numbers in the squares on the ballot sheet, and put the sheet in a box. 15 million people cast their vote and electoral officials count them all by hand, including working out preferences, and we usually get to see the results by bed time. Am I missing something here?