New wrinkles in primary election: Voter ID, scanned ballots

[phoebe]

http://www.grandforks.com/mld/grandforks/news/state/8864088.htm
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BISMARCK, N.D. - North Dakotans who vote in Tuesday's election should bring identification, election officials say, while thousands of voters will be feeding their ballots into a newly deployed scanner, programmed to count votes and detect mistakes.

The Tuesday primary is North Dakota's first statewide election where each voter will be asked for identification that includes the person's name and street address, Secretary of State Al Jaeger said.

If a voter lacks a driver's license or other form of ID, the person still may vote by signing a sworn statement attesting to his or her eligibility to vote in the precinct.

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They keep running tallies of a precinct's results, which are recorded on an electronic data card and printed out when the voting ends. The card can transfer voting data into an election computer in a few seconds.

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When the machine catches a potential ballot error, it beeps and gives the voter the option of retrieving his or her ballot, and filling out another one.

Bear in mind these machines are made by ES&S, which has a less than honest reputation when it comes to voting systems.

[alfredo]

1. A smart company adjust to consumer demand,

or pretends that it is.

[el dusto]

2. voting is easy and fun

I used one of the aforementioned machines to vote on Tuesday, and it seemed like a pretty slick operation - filling out ballots is not the most complicated thing in the world, and I must have done it right, because the machine beeped and said "vote counted," or something to that effect. No "wrinkles" at all.

Unless the machine shredded the ballot (which i doubt; it's a pretty big machine, I suspect for purposes of paper-tray), this is an awesome way to count votes: electronic counting of paper ballots with the commensurate paper trail that can be easily followed... the ballots were identical to the old ones, except these were counted by machine instead of by hand, and these ballots could just as easily be recounted by hand.

The voter ID thing is hardly a "wrinkle," unless you're Scott McClellan and trying to rig the polls. It's so easy to vote in ND, the least you can do is identify yourself to the satisfaction of the officials.

Now, if only the candidates I'd voted for had won...

[cheezus]

3. I had to sign that affidavit

We'd voted there before, but they didnt' add us to the list. My drivers licence has an old address on it, so I had to swear that I wasn't a cheater.