Dieter wrote:
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Jack Carroll writes:The one real weakness with the present system, optical scanning of hand-marked ballots, is that nobody orders a manual recount unless they suspect an error, which they usually don't unless the election is close. An internal fault could produce a large error as easily as a small one.
The machines are supposed to check themselves. A machine that reads the ballot twice would be much more accurate even if it had minor errors.
Count all votes twice, once with Brand-A machine, once with Brand-B machine, which is required to be significantly different from Brand-A. If the counts differ, run them through again. Still different? Hand recount.
I wonder if they test the machines with a validation stack of ballots.
Hand recounts of a few randomly selected precincts.
Problem there is that the humans probably can't do any better than the machine. In theory, the humans can never get it exactly correct, but the machine will either have at least 3 '9's (99.9% correct) or it will make large errors due to a malfunction. Problem is that there is the possibility of an intermittent malfunction of the machine. Intermittent malfunctions drive repairmen nuts. The scanners they use in Arizona are at the polls and they are very picky about accepting ballots -- they kick them out if they can't read them correctly. You insert the ballot and wait a few seconds while it decides to accept it or beep and it comes back out just like a bad dollar bill in a vending machine. -- JRT _______________________________________________ Open-graphics mailing list [email protected] http://lists.duskglow.com/mailman/listinfo/open-graphics List service provided by Duskglow Consulting, LLC (www.duskglow.com)
