We were required to rerun all the voted ballots
Fred's comments point up another advantage of these optical scan voting machines.
If something goes wrong with the machine, or electricity goes off, or whatever, voters can continue to mark their paper ballots with the special pens (maybe by candlelight, even) and turn them in to the election judges, and go on about their daily business. Unlike all-electronic systems, there is no backup and long waiting lines due to such mishaps. There were many reports of people leaving without voting because of the long lines & delays at polling places in other states with such all-electronic systems.
It's true that you lose out on the extra error-catching features of the scanner when you leave before your ballot is run thru the scanner. You don't get warnings like it telling you that you voted for 4 candidates but there are only 3 open seats, or that you failed to vote in all the judge's elections, etc. But your vote is still accepted, and counted. In systems design we call that "graceful degradation" -- you lose some of the extra features, but the basic system continues to work.
Tim Bonham, Ward 12, Standish-Ericsson
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