Nice!

http://www.bradblog.com/Docs/GoAllTheWayFlorida_FloridaMovesToPaperBallots_05030 7.pdf

This is a big deal, if you are into voting issues. Essentially, Florida was a major early adopter of the electronic touch screen voting machines. This was driven by the hanging chad problems in 2000.

(none of us really needs to know what a chad is)

This move is backed with HAVA dollars, making that piece of legislation worthy afterall, in that it can be used to actually fix the vote, instead of just bury it in machines.

I've been advocating optical scan / paper ballot as the best overall solution to voting issues for a long time. It empowers VBM and traditional polling place voting. It can be watched, audited and recounted as the law requires.

From a counting perspective it's not trouble free, but from a casting the vote perspective, it's about as solid as it gets.

Florida will use machines for disabled people, where warranted. I believe these are marking machines, not touch screens.

I don't know how / if they are to address the issue of declaring voter intent standards. As the law in Florida currently stands, this decision is made on a district level. This was the legal mess that hosed up 2000, in that those decisions were never made, thus a recount was never actually done.

I believe that same legal mess is still in place. Ideally, it won't happen this time around, given a solid means to actually cast a vote.

In general, this is a huge development, but there is more to be done. Ballot design, by law, is not something we can mandate on a federal level. However, I do believe we could incorporate standards bodies and make those standards available to districts willing to use them.

An ANSI standard ballot would pass metrics for readability, efficiency and overall robustness where the enduring nature of the record is concerned. Not sure if we will ever get there however...

The beauty of a benchmark ballot would be the ability to then craft benchmark court tests for voter intent that could be agreed upon, reasonable, etc... This would close the, "I'm losing! Let's go to court." trend we've been seeing grow since 2000.

That's it, just wanted to share some voting news!

Good old paper ballots, guess that modern technology was too complicated for demo's.

With a paper ballot you wont have that pesky hanging chad problem, but you will have a problem on some ballots, because someone wont fill in hte blank all the way, or will check 2 columns. And then sooner or later someone is going to spill coffee on a stack of ballots. And then there is the case where someone substitutes a pile of ballots. In San Francisco, after the last election, using paper ballots they found several empty ballot boxes on the water front.

And let us not forget in the last Washington election, how during every recount, they kept finding lost ballots, all voting for the demo side.

It's too bad that they have taken a step back in Florida. Just because the implementation of electronic voting they used was poor doesn't mean electronic voting itself is all bad. I think the model of using computers to create paper ballots that can then be counted by machine or human is probably the best way. Then there's no confusion about the voter's intent, and there's a paper trail. The voter himself can inspect the ballot before turning it in.

Andrew

I've been thinking about this all day...

I think there is always confusion about voter intent, but I think what you just suggested is a solid option.

As long as the ballot, where the enduring record of votes cast is paper, I really don't care how it gets marked. Pen, computer, simple machine... No biggie.

So, put this into the context of VBM. With VBM, voters have lots of time. A machine makes no sense right?

At the polls, time is shorter, more mistakes, scratch outs, etc...

Maybe the Florida law would allow for this kind of voting... either way, I don't think it's a step back, in that establishing the paper ballot as being warranted is still a good thing.

At the least, it opens the door for a smarter hybrid. I would vote on such a hybrid, given the printed ballot, I verify to reflect my intent, is used directly for the tally.

This is shaping up to be an interesting review of electronic voting machines:

http://www.ss.ca.gov/elections/elections_vsr.htm

"I've been thinking about this all day..."

Jeez, all day I thought about quitting time and having a cold brew or two.

well...

All I can say is that I didn't expect that response!

Knowing Andrew, there was something to it worth thinking about.

And work was boring!