Berkeley CSUA MOTD:Entry 34423
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2025/07/09 [General] UID:1000 Activity:popular
7/9     

2004/10/28-29 [Politics/Domestic/California, Politics/Domestic/Election] UID:34423 Activity:high
10/28   Here is a stupid question of the day.  Since butterfly ballot doesn't
        work, and electronic voting machine sucks, why don't we just use
        *SCANTRONS* for ballot?  Anyone who attend a year or two of high
        school would be very familar with this system, and scantron is a
        relatively fast accurate means of casting a vote, no?
        \_ not sure why anyone uses the butterfly ballot, good question
        \_ This is how we do it in my county (Northern CA).  Each issue on the
           ballot has a rectangle next to it.  We use purple felt-tip pens to
           fill in the rectangles.  These systems are referred to "optical"
           systems among the voting machines.  They have the lowest rate of
           ballot spoilage of all methods IIRC.
        \_ We're using scantrons as of 2004 in L.A. County too, I believe.
        \_ San Francisco uses Optical scan as well.  It is by far and away
           considered to be the best overall method, but I believe the
           machines are very expensive compared to the Diebold type
           devices.  Counties don't want to pay for expensive things like
           that.
           \_ Well, you know there's a government subsidy on voting
              machines with easily fakable vote counts.
        \_ Hey, Oregon has mail-in balloting only.  They should do this
           nationally.  No more long line, wrong precinct problems.
           They just have to mail them by some postmark, let's say, or drop
           them off at specific locations by a certain day.
           \_ Absentee has the most possibilities for fraud.  I'm for outlawing
              it.
        \_ Sutter County uses scantrons as well.
        \_ How about if people are too stupid to write legible ballots /
           vote they have to live with their own actions?
           \_ A scantron card is easy to use if you can figure it out.  A
              butterfly ballot can get fucked up by quite a lot of reasonably
              intelligent people.  A Diebold machine can crash and lose all
              votes on its little Windows brain forever, or have its Microsoft
              Access "security" hacked and have votes changed, without any
              record.
        \_ As balloting methods go, scantrons are a lot better than many of
           the other methods out there, but still far from perfect.  If memory
           serves the most common problem with scantron style ballots are
           entry errors, e.g. partially filled in bubble/rectangle, filling in
           multiple rectangles for a single race, etc.  Though better than
           punchcards with their hanging, pregnant, dimpled, etc. chads there
           is still the possibility of inaccuracy when interpreting voter
           intent.
           Scantrons are *WAY* cheaper than computerized touch-screen
           DRE voting systems, but most of the scantron voting systems are
           made by the same companies that make DRE voting systems.  Since
           there's more profit to be made on DRE systems than scantrons, the
           companies are much more aggressive about selling the DRE systems.
           It's a pretty easy sell since many election supervisors are fairly
           clueless when it comes to technology, and the DRE systems have a
           much higher ``gee-whiz, ain't computers cool'' factor than
           scantrons.  The money allocated by HAVA (Help America Vote Act) can
           only be spent on election equipment/maintenance, and if local
           officials don't spend it, it disappears so there's no incentive to
           buy scantrons for price reasons.
           One other thing to consider is that scantron ballot counting
           devices are potentially hackable, though, IMO, much less so than
           most DRE systems.  Of course, you have a paper trail for manual
           recounts which is definitely an improvement over DRE's.
           -dans
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