Hacker News Reader

Comment by duxup | Hacker News Reader

In Minnesota we have a hybrid system where you fill out a paper ballot. The then you feed it through a scanner that indicates that it counted your vote, counts it, and it rolls into a locked box.

The machine and ballots are tied together right there. I really like the system as if all else fails you can get a paper trail and I belive even ID machines.

View on HN

I like this system the best. You can also have another machine that fills out the paper ballots, which can be really helpful for people with disabilities. You still get the option to examine the filled out ballot before turning it in for counting.

The machines seem to work well too. I don't know why everyone doesn't do it like we do.

Yeah, and I really like a ballot that I touched, I marked up and so forth.

Because the people in power are terrified that just maybe there actually is some funny business going on and they are benefiting from it (by having been elected), and if they fix the system they will lose the next time around. It’s probably an irrational fear in many ways, but there’s always that little bit of them wondering.

Also, they could have granted long term contracts to existing suppliers, don’t have a budget to replace existing machines, don’t want to make the person who bought them look bad, or even possibly don’t want to say the old machines are bad because it calls into question the integrity of past elections.

That sounds great, this way you can have the machine count the votes for convenience but also let humans count again and if there is any mismatch then we know that there is a problem.

This was also a thing in Michigan, at least in the precinct where I lived. It seemed to work well.

I think Wisconsin and North Dakota also have this system.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com