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