How Is Voting Accomplished Where You Vote?

[ThomWV]

Where I vote, in Preston County, West Virginia, the move to electronic voting took place last cycle, in 2004. Prior to 2004 votes were cast by pencil mark on a paper ballot. Ballots were completed in the privacy of a draped cell and deposited, before two witnesses, into a metal locked box later to be counted.

In 2004 we went electronic. The machines used - no idea who makes them - are touch screen. They print a paper tape showing your vote as you make on-screen choices. When finished making ballot selections the paper tape prints out indicating my choices below a easily viewable window. Electronic with a paper trail. I feel comfortable with the system.

What do you have in your voting distinct, how long has it been that way. Do you feel comfortable with it or not?

[Ron Green]

1. All mail-in, all the time. Nothin' but paper.

[MissB]

18. Yep. Wonderful thing, too.

[Viva_La_Revolution]

25. I love it too, but

I'd be completely comfortable if there was a mandatory 2-5% hand count after each election.

[leftchick]

2. ES&S IVotronic

and I have ZERO faith in them. :(

[annabanana]

3. vintage lever machines..

Nice, solid and pretty damn secure...

[slackmaster]

4. Optical scan - Diebold AccuVote-TSX

Ballots are marked with black felt pens, then fed by the voter into a reader that looks way too much like a paper shredder. That thing reads the ballot and drops it into a flimsy cardboard box.

[bigwillq]

5. Lever machines

here in CT

[Lex]

6. We connect the lines with a black marker on a paper ballot

and then we hand feed it into a machine that 'grabs' it and then scans the ballot. After the scan the LED number on the front of the machine advances the count one number to the next. In other words, I can tell how many ballots have been fed through that machine by that number.

The paper ballots could be hand counted if necessary.

[movonne]

10. This is the way we used to vote when I lived in Ca...and I think that

was as easy as could be...

[karlrschneider]

11. Sounds just the same as he have here in Okla.

Are they "Op-tech' machines?

[Lex]

13. That sounds right, Op-tech. I'm in Durham County, NC.

:hi:

[karlrschneider]

17. That's interesting, I've thought we were the only state using them.

Oddly enough, there is very little information on that company (that I can find at least)...I've Googled it several times and found not very much. One thing I've been meaning to do but shamefully haven't is to find out just exactly how the totals are extracted, recorded and transmitted from these boxes. I damn sure will on 11/7! ;-)

[lies and propaganda]

24. Same here in Maricopa County (PHX) Arizona

only thing I could add is that the machine their fed into is always monitored by a member of each party.

[cali]

7. I still vote precisely;

as you did up until 2 years ago. Pencil, paper, draped voting booth, locked box, and little old ladies.

Love it. (Northeast Kingdom, Vermont)

[movonne]

8. Here in Or. we have mail in ballots and I feel pretty good about

this...and there is a paper trail...I don't know why it is not done all over the country...we have to pay postage and I think that if this would be a standard way of voting that the gov. should pay the postage...

[karlrschneider]

9. Paper ballots, optically scanned - with "Op-Tech" machines.

I'm fairly comfortable with them since they save the actual paper (card-stock) ballots and the machines aren't hooked up to central computer(s). Recounts are pretty rare around here but they do happen and it's a simple matter to do a manual recount.

[tulsakatz]

12. in Oklahoma.........

...we still do it with pencil and paper and then put the ballot in a locked box.

So far as I know, there have not been any purging of registrations here.

[Nicole]

23. Not all of Oklahoma

I haven't placed a ballot in a locked box in years. We use a optical scanner here.

[SmokingJacket]

14. Lever machines.

I was very confident in them until I started working as an elections inspector, now I'm only pretty confident. I think they're fairly safe from tampering -- and since they're not online, any kind of large-scale fraud would have to be a huge, huge conspiracy -- BUT they are vulnerable to lots of kind of error. People are poorly trained, and the machinery is old, so things get messed up a lot. Printouts from the back of the machine can be pale and smudgy, and threes look like zeroes, for example.

Still and all... WAY preferable to the paperless touchscreen. When we get electronic machines next year, I hope to hell there's a paper trail.

[Up2Late]

15. I vote on the nifty Diebold AccuVote TS paperLESS e-voting machine!

Neet-o.

My "vote" hasn't been counted since the November 7, 2000 (if then).

[doc03]

16. We used the same machine as you in Ohio this year, try and

catch the re-run of Low Dobbs tonight. He did a good segment on the Diebold machines and how they can be hacked. They showed a ballot with George Washington opposing Benedict Arnold. They gave George Washington 3 votes and Benedict Arnold 0 votes, then they showed the tape it recorded 2 for Benedict Arnold and 1 for George Washington.

[cadmium]

19. I vote in a small town in MA

We use fill in the dots paper ballots that are then fed into optical scanners. The originals are saved and have been useful on recounts. We have needed recounts on a couple town property tax over-ride bills. No sign at all of fraud that I know of.

[guinivere]

20. In my corner of WI we have paper ballots,

mark it with felt tipped pen, put it in the gray box that sucks it in, counts it. There is a 'register receipt' on the top. I haven't looked at what it says. I feel pretty confident. The paper ballots could be hand counted, the receipt on top, plus the older ladies watch like hawks.

[watercolors]

21. Paper ballot

optically scanned. Small town central Fla. like it and feel confident my vote is counted!

[Nicole]

22. Paper ballot with black marker connecting the arrows

then fed into an optical scanner. LED screen shows how many ballots have been counted.

[windbreeze]

26. 100% Absentee ballot

since the last prez election...not so sure I feel comfortable with it...how do I know my ballot is being counted? and other questions abound...like how can they advertize that they will keep accepting ballots for a special levee several weeks after the date it was legally supposed to end? (it stated your ballot had to be returned by the date stamped, in order to count, which to me would appear to be legal and binding?...)I wasn't aware they could, after the fact, decide to hold a vote on anything open until sometime in the future when they decided they finally had enough ballots...seems to me that's vote manipulation..and if it can be done for a levee vote....when else might it happen?
windbreeze

[havocmom]

27. Pens/pencils. Hand counted, verified by double teams, IDs required

That ID thing is amusing. VERY small town where just about all born, raised, will die here. People have known each other all their lives, if not related one way or another. Still, haven't heard of anyone going ballistic over providing ID. The county sends out voter ID cards that will do, or any picture ID or two non-picture IDs or a utlitly bill envelope.

Ballot counting done like this:
Teams of four people
One reads each ballot choice, going down each ballot.
One looks at ballot to catch any errors in the reading/announcing of each vote
Two keep tallies for each candidate, proposition, ballot measure

When a tally person gets a certain number votes tallied (five) for any one candidate or ballot measure, they chrip up. The ballots that have been read are put face down in a pile so they have them in the order in which they were read/tallied. If both tally people do not hit the chirp up point at the same time, the team goes back to the point at which they all agreeded. The five vote announcment point maked backtracking pretty easy.

It is simple and accurate. Takes some time, but hey, assuring votes are counted is worth spending time on.