It seems to me that the logistics of having automatic tabulating
machines available in some of these rural areas might be a bit tough as
well. I live in a city of considerable size, but even some of our voting
locations (i.e., churches, school lobbies, 4H clubs, Boys and Girls
Clubs, etc.), do not always have connections available to send the data
without causing a lot more disruption than the voting booths already
cause. In a rural setting, I believe this might be an even bigger
obstacle to tabulate the votes at the time a citizen cast his vote.

Cynthia Bridges-Fowler
MIS Operations Analyst
IMC Salt, Inc., a division of IMC Global
[log in to unmask]
http://www.imcsalt.com

>>> Glenn Koster <[log in to unmask]> 11/13/00 01:15PM >>>
Tom wrote:

> The "scantron" type form that was used where I voted is scanned
> immediately when the voter feeds the ballot into the machine.  If it
is
> marked incorrectly; e.g., the voter voted for more candidates than
> allowed, the ballot is rejected and the voter can correct it on the
spot.

This isn't the first post that I have read concerning the "scantron"
ballot.
However, I would like to point out something.  We are a small rural
county
that does indeed use the scantron ballot (as do all of the neighboring
counties around us).  However, not one county uses the automatic
scoring (?)
technique described.  Every county simply collects the ballots and
scans
them after the polls close.  If I would have mismarked my ballot, I
would
not have known it at all.  Many of the county's residents are senior
citizens (50% are retirees) who have trouble marking the ballots.
Many
often complain about why we went away from the punched card ballots
that
were in use until approximately 5 years ago.  It seems that the older
ballots were easier for the seniors around here to punch out.

For what it's worth... the move from punched cards to scantron
occurred
simultaneously with a computer system upgrade.  The new system would
not
support a "card reader".  As for getting enough of the scanners to
perform
the automatic scan at the time of voting - it is cost prohibitive.
Since we
are rural, you can imagine how many precincts we have and the budget we
have
for such niceties.  [We have 20+ precincts.  In town there are 5
precincts -
for a town of 1250 people... which resulted in extremely small lines!]

Glenn Koster