Showing your (young) age Kaleb! A "hanging chad" is a partially detached punch-out on an IBM data card. You probably don't remember people carrying around huge boxes of IBM punch cards, I've not seen a punch machine in use since 1983 when SIU retired their last one.
The Votomatic system used an IBM punch card with partially cut holes, the voter used a stylus to push out the one next to the name of the candidated they wanted to vote for. Needless to say, the card were fragile, and after a few trips through the reader started to shed un-selected "chads", making them unreadable. The major drawback to them in high voting areas is the the tray that caught the chads punched out by the voter were fairly shallow, and if not emptied often enough the stylus would hit a pile of punched out chads and NOT completely remove the selected on. If it didn't come off completely, it would hang onto the card, a "hanging chad", and if the ballot was handled much, a lot of them could come loose. So was the hanging chad a vote or not? Impossible to tell. _______________________________________ http://www.okiebenz.com To search list archives http://www.okiebenz.com/archive/ To Unsubscribe or change delivery options go to: http://mail.okiebenz.com/mailman/listinfo/mercedes_okiebenz.com
