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C'Mon Mario... Don't be so naive. You know as well as I do, if there were a way to guarantee safe and fair elections in New Mexico, those always slowest counting Democrat registeration heavy counties, like Guadalupe, McKinley, Rio Arriba, Mora, Santa Fe, San Miguel and Taos, couldn't wait until late at night, or even the next day, to add just barely as many “votes” needed, right at the last minute, to ensure Democrats will always get positive results.
Hey Mario. Seems like an excellent solution.
Never work. It makes too much sense.
You have described the AutoMARK, used in NM and other jurisdictions to provide access for disabled voters who have difficulty marking a paper ballot. These machines were available to anyone who wanted to use them.
It's greatest operational disadvantage is that people may skip the review of the ballot that has been marked (too much trouble), so voter verification is not really achieved. This problem has been verified with the paper tapes used for paper audit trails.
Thanks for addressing this issue, Mario. As Paul stated, this process is indeed in place for disabled voters in New Mexico. Is your recommendation to extend this option to all voters? If so, I'm just not sure how it would improve upon the paper ballot system. For those who are interested, see this: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp...?
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I do think it's important to note that two fundamental items must be part of the process you describe. First, any electronic system should have open source code and be auditable. Second, the paper ballot should be the ballot of record in cases of a recount or audit.
A big part of the reason that paper ballots were rejected by the scanner was the fact that people checked instead of filled in the ovals, or selected both candidates for a position. Allowing everyone to use a machine means that these problems goes away.
Much of the election night delay we experienced during this past election had to do with trying to interpret and count these "rejected" ballots. Plus, it eliminates the frustration experienced by voters who filled out a ballot, made a mistake, and had to start all over because their ballot was spoiled. Something I observed frequently at the polling place.
Open source is great, although honestly, it is not completely necessary in the solution proposed. We have a paper ballot trail in the case a recount is necessary.
To address Paul's point, no one could opt out from printing the paper ballot. As to whether or not, the voter checked the printed ballot, well , some responsibility needs to still stay with the voter. If they're too lazy to check that the printout is right, I have to wonder why they even bother showing up to vote.
The system we used this year in New Mexico is a disaster, and taking two weeks to finish counting votes did nothing to bolster voter confidence, and if voters had been in the warehouse observing the counting, their confidence would have been even lower.
What I want to know is how we managed all those years with paper ballots for absentee voting, some of which must have been mis-marked. It didn't take nearly as long to count them before, did it? Is it that: 1. We had more new absentee voters, so more ballots with errors, or
2. We had a new kind of ballot (filling in ovals instead of completing arrows), so more ballots had errors, or 3. The old system counted the rest of the ballot by machine and only left the mis-marked part to be hand-counted. (I don't know about that one.) or
4. The system was new to everyone and therefore slower and more frustrating. They told me when we switched from lever to touch-screen voting machines it was slow, too.
I think as we get used to it, almost everyone will like it better. Especially when we read about the reliability problems with purely electronic machines.
How about we have all mail elections so that every voter receives a ballot and then can return it (if they want to or not) and then all the ballots can be counted in one place at one time and the results can then be displayed in a timely manner... you can count Bernalillo County's ballots at the PIT so every cry baby can sit there and watch professionals operate the machines right in front of every interested party (18,018 seats available). The biggest reason why the vote totals took so damn long is because the Clerk allowed the process to be taken over by Party's, Attorneys, Activists, etc. when she should have just told them all to observe and shut up while her office and the volunteers counted the ballots and gave the results. After the results are given tell the interested party's to take their observations and make a court case or pay for a recount or whatever sore losers do.
Commenting by HaloScan
