Voting Technologies: EBM and Paper Ballots

There are a number of different machines used, and where you live pretty much determines the method in use. Here's a pretty good map that breaks it down by state:

http://dvice.com/voting/

I've always voted using a lever action machine. Never had a problem (as far as I know).

Daytime-Nitetime...I still can't get the map to download; modem just sits there waiting, waiting, waiting. How "big" a map is it?

Voting systems vary from state to state, and if a state doesn't have a state-wide system or standard, it can vary from county to county. A county with a large city might have an electronic system because it can afford the price. Within the same state, rural counties would probably use paper ballots. Of course the electronic systems are faster at returning their tallies, but paper ballots provide a tangible resource for a recount.

In Oklahoma, we used to vary from county to county, but we have had a standardized system for at least 10 years. It's a hybrid system. The ballots are actually printed on card stock, with arrows pointing towards your choices. The arrows have gaps in them, and you indicate your choice by using a marker to draw a line across the gap. When you finish voting, you feed the ballot into a machine that reads and records your choices. The biggest problem I remember hearing about with this system is that one county had a larger than expected turnout, and so they didn't have enough ballots printed beforehand.

"A county with a large city might have an electronic system because it can afford the price. Within the same state, rural counties would probably use paper ballots."

Atleast dont fit in the contaxt of India. We are 70% rural.

As a third part observer here I could say that i'm sincerely glad for India's such a progressive election technology. I'm supposing it's the only effective way to cast a vote for a more than one billion population.

Nevertheless I think it's not too bad to use proven things which worked for decades. Just don't repair it unless it was broken.:).

But our system in the US IS BROKEN when machines break down and are hacked by hackers, some of them start counting backwards and have all sorts of problems. Mostly they are manufactured by companies that have connections without any credentials and make junk machines with a variety of problems. We see that countries like Brazil have very dependable voting machines as does India, and would hope that the US get their machines from these countries in stead of making them here and save tons of money as a bonus as these machines would be much cheaper than what we have.

vshwn7@aol.com

for many people paper votes are too difficult. I've scrutineered many Australian elections, all paper ballot. As Voting here is compulsory every knucklehead has too vote. some of them can't write a 1 straight and a surprising number can't read ( going by their reaction to the instructions)

We find paper ballots are the safest way as you can see the whole paper, signed by the electoral officer to make it official and accounted for by fairly ordinary financial methods. Big plus is they are permanent and can be counted and recounted dozens of times. Mindyou we only have 18,000,000 people in Oz only half of whcih can vote and Polling places handle around 1000 votes each so we only need 9,000 polling places ish. India would need like 9,000,000 polling places which makes the counting a nightmare for organisers! At an estimate you would need 100 million people to run the election.

The main reason Australia doesn't change is we don't have to and the system is proven to work. Democratic governments always place the electoral process above convenience, thus they are very reluctant to change a system that works and everyone is happy with.

Referring to your statement, "We find paper ballots are the safest way as you can see the whole paper, signed by the electoral officer to make it official and accounted for by fairly ordinary financial methods," a question comes to mind about seeing the "whole paper" (ballot) and [its being] "signed by...[polling?] officer."

If the Australia-originated (subsequently universally adopted) system of the Australian Ballot (that is to say, the secret ballot) is preserved, there must be a method in use to prevent any polling officer's eyes from seeing (votes), yet still be able to endorse each and every ballot cast.

True? How?

That point aside, your post makes a good point about how balloting polling systems evolve, or don't evolve, depending on what a people consider(s) important and what makes best (horse) sense. Albeit that these two concepts are not always in agreement: "what makes sense" has proven "right" for Australia, whereas dependence on technology (and, recently, a mistrust of officialdom) has been the rule in the United States—in fact it could be said that US election problems of late are primarily a reflection of technology dependency in spite of horse sense.

All things being equal, there is little to dispute that a paper-ballot-cast polling system such as used in Australia is far and away more reliable and safer than all alternatives; but it depends (as it's one frailty) on the honesty and integrity of Australian citizens both private and public—something which, long since, is not a reasonable assumption the US.

Here it must be pointed out in counterpoint to the suggestion otherwise in Rakesh Semwal's topic-starting OP, that across the US (with the rare exception of isolated, small populations where only paper ballot vote polling is economically tenable), paper ballot casting, per se, is not in use now, nor has it been in use within living memory of all but an extremely few, extremely aged Americans.

Before more than half of Americans now living were born, the curtained-booth, mechanical polling machine had already been in use for decades (paralleling the technology rise of IBM, from its collator "business machine" though its 1401 mainframe "data processor." (The voting booth was fast counting votes, and rivaled ballot box (paper) voting in reliability, but suffered from lack of (readability) ease of use [in "large" elections] because of its very large ballot display in close confinement—not surprisingly, party-line voting reached its zenith during the polling booth era.

With and following the advent of the IBM 360 in the late sixties, came the gradual replacement of polling machines with the (for government, cheaper and logistically less burdensome) folio-bound card punch polling tablets—a little bit of the old and not much more of the new, in technology terms. That, in various forms, was the technology that persisted in many US states...until its faults in close elections (along with those of unbridled human ambition) was revealed during the Florida episode—on balance, a system that on persisted about as long as, and served better than, the voting booth. While it might seem a paper voting system to some, actual polling was mechanical and computerized, but without the mechanical faults and breakdowns of voting machines...or so it was thought until the human-in-the-loop reliably factor revealed its design weaknesses.

Replacing holes with dots, the optical scan polling system presently in use also has the appearance of paper ballot casting; but, again, (and with human "punch writing" eliminated at the polling place) the process is entirely electromechanical; paper vote transfer forms being "cast" unaltered into boxes only for the purpose of backup redundancy...

Referring to Rakesh's assertions about ballot marking devises, it is hard to see—and seems greatly over simplistic, if not naive—how he comes to such conclusions regarding both EBM (devices) and Document ballot-computer based polling systems. There is nothing intrinsically advanced about EMM and various kinds of markers (some of which have found use in some states...considerably earlier than 10 years ago), nor intrinsically backward about document use in conjunction with vote casting.

Because each state faces its own election peculiarities there is probably no one polling technology that would work best in all cases.

Consider further (Rakesh), that state polling systems do not come into being without political influence and input that reflects the needs of both politicians and private citizens. So, for example, one might ask one's self how it came to be in India that a voting aid device intended by design to assist persons who might have difficulty voting otherwise, was adopted as a statewide standard (regardless of physical impairment or limitation). One might further venture a guess: that 10+ years ago one political party (perhaps in majority) which perceived its electoral fortunes to be closely aligned with the voter demographics most likely to need EBMs, and more likely to turn out because of EBMs, would also provide the mandate as well as the funding to make EBM's available to all voters. I'm not saying that must have been what happened in India; but state adoption of such devices in the US (in the early eighties as I recall) would almost certainly have entailed such political calculations.

"If the . . . secret ballot is preserved, there must be a method in use to prevent any polling officer's eyes from seeing (votes), yet still be able to endorse each and every ballot cast.

True? How?"

Although you apparently don't consider the optically scannned forms as paper ballots (from later commets), the principle used where I live will work in either case. A prospective voter comes in, is identified, and is confirmed as being eligible. A sequential numeric sticker is stuck to a printed form, an election official signs to make it an official ballot, and it is handed to the voter to fill out. On exiting the curtained booth, the voter carries it to the scanner and sticks it in; a couple of tenths of a second later, a sound and light confirm sufccessful scanning, lack of conflicting votes (voting for two candidates for a single office, e.g.), and the paper form drops into a locked hopper. While I have not seen it happen, I understand that any errors found by the scanner / tallying device would result in the paper being returned to the voter, and a replacement ballot issued as before, "trading in" the defective one so that only a single vote can be cast. I cannot see why use of paper ballots NOT set up for optical scanning could not be handled almost identically (minus the immediate confirmation of a valid selection, of course).

I think i was some misunderstood. When i said "don't repair it unless it was broken" I did mean that traditional paper ballots should remain as a proven procedure to guarantee more or less reliable way to avoid feasible either casual or deliberately done mistakes.

Paper ballots easy to recount and recheck for anyone. If even someone decided to forge election results in case of any applied hi-tech balloting system he/she needs to involve at this crime only a few (even maybe one person) while for traditional printed ballots there're believed a lot of people to be involved, therefore it's a natural barrier for those who would be plan this misdeed.

We used an electronic machine where you turn a dial to select the box on a video screen then push a button to mark it. Electronic votes are so much easier to dispose of than paper ones.

I voted by paper ballot, but I also live in the sticks.

Zimbabwe & Zambia are one up on the first world. They use self changing ballot papers.

Our Ballots are all mail-in. This removes the problems of voting machine fraud and poll hours and crowding

In my suburb, we had the choice of paper ballots or touch-screen voting computer. The computer printed a paper trail on cash register tape.

In 2004, Ohio had electronic machines that didn't produce the paper trail. That led to a lot of fraud accusations after a very close election. It didn't help that the President of Diebold, the company that built the machines as well as a Republican fund raiser, had promised Ohio to the Republicans.

Personally, I have always preferred paper ballots. The problem is that in our "high tech world" everyone wants instant answers. Why this is necessary is confusing to me as the politicians in the US spend many-fold the dollars for their campaigns (and waste many-fold more hours of the voting public discussing issues they really wont address after election) than anywhere else on the planet. I would think they would enjoy extending the time to have the results. It is interesting to me that the US voters (and Ohio voters in particular) have such a low turnout percentage compared to other countries. Perhaps it is associated with the excessive amount of "hype" we get in the media; I believe the media propagates the election slander and hype for the sake of monetary gain.

I have taken to Absentee Ballots as my form. It allows me to vote early and get it over with.

I heard this morning that less than 75% of registered voters in Ohio voted. That pitiful. I've heard the idea "my vote doesn't mean anything" so often I want to smack someone up side the head.

I don't have an answer, but we REALLY need to convince people that their votes matter. Elections have been won by less than 50 votes per precinct average in the country.

I do like electronic voting machines, mostly so votes are counted and a winner projected before I go to bed.

We use the paper ballots as described by 3Doug (post #3 above); this gives the full paper trail, but tallying the votes is immediate upon feeding the ballot into the machine (although not revealed until after the polls close, of course), so the results are available as quickly as they would be for touch-screen or other fully electronic methods. They are good from the standpoints of initial and upkeep costs, reliability, and ease of use. Much simpler to use than a lot of other systems I've encountered through the years.

I've read several studies done on the purely electronic machines; NONE passed muster as regards security, and most failed any reasonable requirement for reliability, ease of troubleshooting, or confirmation that the software is completely accurate. A number of districts have have had VERY strange anomalies regarding such things as the number of people who voted in one particular contest vs. the total voters, and the simplest explanation by far is that the machines have lost or swapped votes. This could be due to mechanical failure, error, or deliberate software trickery. Having the competing manufacturers each writing proprietary software and keeping its content a trade secret doesn't assure me that the job has been done perfectly! Who did the checking? How hard did someone try to find a way to hack it or subvert it? Is there a "back door" available for the person who wrote it? I can't trust any of them at present.

It is necessary, desirable, and/or legally mandated for audit purposes (which supposedly keeps elections free of fraud) to maintain a paper trail of all votes; but the voting and counting is automated, with possible rare exceptions, in the US states and territories. Paper is still largely essential in the case of absentee ballot casting; but the counting is still automated. In some states where ballots are lengthy and very complex (such as in California and such states where referendum and initiative are practiced) a sample paper ballot form (pre filled at "home" in similar fashion as absentee ballots) is needed in order to expedite ballot casting at polling places; still the casting and counting is automated.

It would be impossible in all locations for any fully automated, Australian balloting system to be free of paper and still be reliably immune from vote fraud. Paper-free ballot casting (in addition to voting) could (can/will) be accomplished in a system in which "part of person" (the established US Federal legal parlance) is cast along with each ballot...something similar to what is already done:

• To provide identity verification and security on the internet (think: banks and bio pods).
• To provide verification for access, such as to corporate, government, and terror-threat-risk installations and conveyances.
• As is already done (by Federal requirement) by driver and vehicle license registrars in many, and eventually all, US states (think: finger printing...)

Presently limited use of such paper free systems for voting will no doubt increase to the point of universality in due course; there will need to be legislative guidelines and public acceptance, as well as budget, before ultimate full adoption of such systems can be realized in practice.