Voting Machine Glitches Already Being Reported 742
Neovanglist writes "CNN, FOX, and MSNBC are reporting that voting machines in three states (Ohio, Indiana, and Florida) have already been showing issues, both in the machines themselves and in the training of poll attendants, causing many districts to switch to paper ballots." From the article: "Voters put the Republican congressional majority and a multitude of new voting equipment to the test Tuesday in an election that defined the balance of power for the rest of George W. Bush's presidency. Both parties hustled to get their supporters out in high-stakes contests across the country, Democrats appealing one more time for change, and appearing confident the mood was on their side. Republicans conceded nothing as their vaunted get-out-the-vote machine swung into motion." If you're in the U.S., and you haven't voted already, go do it!
Paper ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
I was out this morning at 7:00am voting and predictably, two of the ten voting machines (20% folks!) at our location would not take their programs...... Take their programs! And how many times do we have to be shown how easy it is to hack the system? When I left after voting, we were still looking at machines that were not working.
Again, paper ballots folks. It's a simple, cost effective solution that is easier to secure than electronic voting. I have yet to see a valid statistical study that demonstrates that electronic voting is inherently more reliable/statistically valid than paper ballot voting. How much is this move towards electronic voting costing the US taxpayer? Was this a favor for political contributors? I think that the evidence is pretty strong for it which might give even more credibility to the FBI in their new focus on corruption in Washington DC politics.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:4, Insightful)
They can get confusing, especially in major cities where you have dozens of things to vote on. With millions of potential voters. Electronic voting is a good thing, unfortunately it's been horribly implemented. There's no need to be a Luddite on this topic, just the opposite in fact. However, given the current state of things.... paper all the way for 2006!
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The Black arrow is much easier to work with than hole punching.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Informative)
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Usually to allow diagnostic equipment to be attached, but there are other uses for comm ports. I would simply hope that they are not normally accessible during voting periods.
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Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Informative)
If you "X" covers more than one box, your vote is considered spoiled, and therefor not counted. The boxes are large enough (about 1/2" square) that an X will fit comfortably inside.
And it works for us.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Funny)
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There is no "perfect" voting method, and paper ballots proved it. There will always be people too stupid to use it, they will be the loudest about how the ballots are "flawed", and then we have dozens of complicated methods spring up that dont even work for competent people.
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Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Funny)
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Ideal vs. Real isn't a fair comparison. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, the real question is, would a direct democratic system be inferior to the reality of our current representative system, which functions nothing at all like how you describe?
Having every citizen decide based on a 5-sentence position statement, seems like it might be better than letting a handful of citizens decide based on that same 5-sentence position statement and a large wad of cash.
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For example, there might be a law in place that says the President can use military force for 30 days without congressional approval. After that, congress must approve. Sort of like it is today. Then after a period of 6 months, or perhaps a year depending on the issue, a public vote, much like an election, would be cast on the subject.
The ideal democracy would also allow for changes in its election process that reflect
Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
No one's hiding the fact that the United States is a republic ("the Republic, for which it stands..."). But it's also a democracy. And I would argue that the democracy part is more relevant than the republic aspects.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
What a great idea! Why stop there? Let's issue IQ tests too...perhaps require a short essay. If you commit any grammatical errors, then you're not allowed to vote!
That is, unless you is too stupid.
Seriously though, the laws enacted by our government affect everyone, even the stupid. If idiots are having problems voting, maybe it's not their fault. Maybe the voting system should be idiot-proof. Now...IQ tests for the candidates, that's another story. ;-)
Do you have a newsletter? (Score:4, Insightful)
I am interested in these idiot-proof voting machines of which you speak. Please send me your catalog for your full line of idiot-proof products. I am particularly interested in idiot-proof power tools and nuclear weapons, and any other products which allow stupid people to do important things with complete safety and security.
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Idiot proofing is just a pipe dream. A noble goal, to be sure, but a pipe dream none the less. No matter how well intentioned something is, humans will always find a way to screw it up. We've had how long to perfect the use of fire and yet we still manage to burn down how many buildings/forests/cities?
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Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Informative)
There are two people per polling station (a Poll Clerk and a Depute Returning Officer), and each polling station has 200-400 people alloted to it.
Then when the election is over, each team of two begins to count their 200-400 ballots. The Depute Returning Officer takes the votes out of the sealed box they were put in, and reads off the votes out loud to the Poll Clerk who fills in what is basically a giant spreadsheet.
There can be representatives at each station of each of the candidates, and they are allowed to place a vote into dispute if for some reason they don't like it. It then isn't counted immediately but gets placed into a different pile (to be counted later by Elections Canada).
It takes only about 3-5 seconds to take the ballot out of the box, read it, and record it. No team needs to count over 400 ballots or so.. and this happens simultaneously across the entire country, so we get our results very quickly!
Oh, and as a bonus the position is nicely paid (DRO gets a little more then Poll Clerk because it's his responsibility to return the ballots to Elections Canada after the count). It's a great way for students to earn some extra money as well as learn about how democracy works.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:4, Interesting)
What makes it a good system is the digital discipline: there's a lot of separation between valid states, and the transmitting end has a much narrower valid range than the receiving end does. In order from the ballot to make it out of the voter's hands, it must be very clear; if it gets into the box, it's considered valid and counts for whatever it's close to.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:4, Funny)
I dunno that I'd hold up Mexico's electoral system as an especially functional that inspires faith in the electorate.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Paper ballots (Score:4, Informative)
The only way for you to know that the votes going to the counting device are the ones you selected is for you to get a human-readable copy which you then insert into the counting device. Then, of course, you still don't know that the counting machine is on the up-and-up...
Basically, the vote of record needs to be something human readable and unambiguous, thereby opening the door for verifiable, auditable recounts.
What I'd like to see is an electronic voting machine that prints out two copies of my completed ballot, one for the counting device and one for me. These should each be marked with a hash comprising the timestamp of the vote, the contents of the vote, and the specific machine on which I voted. This hash should be recorded by the counting device and associated with the votes cast, such that I have the option to verify my vote against the vote tallied (which would compromise my voter anonymity, of course, but only at my discretion).
A system like that would be an advantage to electronic voting, since it would be essentially impossible to implement in a pure-paper scheme, and it would provide a level of verifiability that doesn't currently exist.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
Then you can take your printout to your boss at work and show him you voted the way he told you to so he won't fire you. Threw your printout away? Fired. Voted wrong? Fired.
There's a reason that there's no record of who you personally voted for. A long as it's possible, there exists the potential for voter coercion.
Absentee ballots (Score:4, Insightful)
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Absentee ballots are problematic for this reason, but you can always go to your polling place on election day and vote a completely different ballot. This breaks down if a poll worker or election official is crooked or incompetent and lets anyone other than the people wh
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Which is why a verifiable paper trail is so critically important. The fact that numerous states have resorted to using a paper ballot in place of the electronic voting machines which are having issues or as a backup, shows that a paper ballot is what should be used.
It's not that hard to use a fill-in-the-bubble ballot because even if the scanner does not correctly record all votes, you still have the original vote to g
Re:Paper ballots (Score:5, Insightful)
Again, that's a problem with voting machines, not paper ballots. Why do machines have to tally the votes? Don't give the bull about them being more efficient, cause they aren't. This has been proven by manual recounts taking less time than the machine ones, and the undeniable fact that other countries that do it the old fashioned way manage to have their results out quicker than the US.
It's really simple: You take a ballot. You mark it with an X inside the box for who you're going to vote for, either at home or in the voting booth. If you don't trust their pens, bring your own. It's up to you to make the [X] readable to the poll worker who tallies the votes. Not a machine. You put the ballot in an envelope inside a curtained-off area (so no-one can see who you vote for), and walk up with the envelope to the supervised poll urn, and drop it there. When the box is emptied, the ballots are taken out of the envelopes, and two people look at each ballot. If they agree, they both note down a valid vote for your [X] (or for blank, if you exercised your democratic right to vote blank). If one of them thinks the vote is invalid, or there's any disagreement, the vote is put aside for review by overseers. It's very easy. Millions do it every year. No machinery involved, except for an incoming-only telephone to report the tally upstreams.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:4, Insightful)
Some A are B does not imply all A are B. There are many good books on elementary logic that can help you out if you do not understand this.
What you are pointing out is that it is possible to have badly-implemented paper-based voting systems.
What you need to prove is that it is possible to have electronic systems that are not subject to absolutely trivial tampering.
Personally, I'd like to see a touch-screen voting system that prints a completed ballot after the user has made their selection and that the voter then looks at to verify, and then walks over to a reader which reads the ballot and records the result. Election law should specify the standard form of the ballot, and should mandate that different companies make the touch-screen system and the ballot reading system used at each polling station. Both the touch-screen system and the ballot counting system would maintain independent totals, and of course the paper ballot would be preserved for hand recounts, which would take place automatically if the touch-screen system and the ballot reading system differed by more than one vote.
The first purpose of electronic voting systems should be the use of technology to introduce more redundancy into the system to create more tamper-proof ballots. Any use of an electronic vote-counter that does not have a paper trail means that simply flipping a few bits can change the outcome of an election, and it is all happening inside a single black box where no one can see or verify what is happening. That's not democracy.
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Where I live, we have had electronic vote tabulation from paper ballots: the same technology they use in the college boards. This system can tabulate just as quickly as a pure electronic system, has a voter confirmable paper trail, and is completely glitch proof as far as the process of recording each vote: there's no machine to be "down". If the tabulators ever were down (which they never are), we could just
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Re:Paper ballots (Score:4, Insightful)
I mean, obviously that can be accomplished quicker via electronic means.
But the point remains, it's not the machine itself that is responsible for the fraud per se, it's the people who have access to the machines after the polling stations close. Paper ballots have the exact same problem.
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Marked paper into a box is the only way to go when 99.9% of votes need to be counted to scrutinized.
Re:Paper ballots (Score:4, Insightful)
1) Number of candidates and issues on the ballot. In my local election there were 25 races to be decided. In other local elections I heard of as many as 38 ballot issues. That makes for a lot of paper. We did it before, but electronic voting is a huge improvement over carrying the typically 1-3 11"x17" sheets and trying to mark them and maintain any kind of privacy. (Yes, the ballots really were printed on that size sheet in amazingly large type.)
2) Multiple voting locations. Here we have early voting for the two weeks prior to the actual election. On election day everyone has a polling location they must be at to cast their ballot. However, during the early voting period, anyone can go to any of the early polling locations in their county. Thus I was able to cast my early ballot at the polling location that sets up in the lobby where I work, even though I work in a completely different City from where I live. It also meant that I could cast my ballot on my lunch hour at my convenience, rather than having to drive all the way across town during voting hours to vote at the Elementary School location near my house. Having this flexibility, with paper only, used to require that every early voting location had to keep enough ballots on hand for every voting district in the county. This was a huge pile of paper, and many, many "excess" ballots that were never used, but had to be tracked and destroyed to make sure they were not abused.
3) Multiple languages. In many jurisdictions ballots must be provided in the speakers native language, usually Spanish, but just in our local school district there are 21 different languages that they try to integrate. With electronic balloting you can provide all of these, much easier and with much less expense and chance of mis-use of unused ballots.
In short, there are many reasons that electronic voting can be a huge improvement. It just needs to be implemented properly. And the kicker is that implementing it properly is relatively cheap, easy, and fast. Implementing it improperly, like it generally has been, is harder and can only be defended as a means to rig elections.
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How is that superior to paper voting with a paper trail?
Immediate gratification (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, that's a new low.
Vote because some of us cant.. (Score:5, Insightful)
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well, I don't really want to swap places with you, but
Re:Vote because some of us cant.. (Score:4, Funny)
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You probably mean, "move to a state." DC isn't a state. Whatever isn't being used for governement buildings should probably be given back to Maryland. Then those asshats will hopefully finally shut up. Or maybe they can form a new state with Northern Virginia. Anyone who's lived elsewhere in Virginia can tell you it's really a separate state already.
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As opposed to what? The alternative is that someone who knows nothing about a candidate, an issue, or whatever is going to make an uneducated guess as to what they should do.
Is that somehow better? You would rather have an uninformed voter basically fill in dots (pull levers/push buttons/touch a screen) at random? That's not a democracy, that's chaos. That's why candidates fight over who gets listed first on the ballot because it can give up to a 5% boost in the vote becaus
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I think... (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I think... (Score:4, Funny)
From TFA... (Score:2)
Well, I guess this eliminates the hacking option.
By the way, everyone, go out and vote today. Even if you don't agree with either party (which is where I often find myself), you have a chance to create some fun by giving a Republican president a De
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I hate bush, I hate Kerry.
I really dislike my representative.
I think my two options for Gov suck, I have the choice of an anti stem cell gun nut of fscking jerry brown for attorney general?
I give the fuck up.
I hereby declaire myself the candidate for every state office under the Violent Libertarian Party, where there are a minimum of laws, and one law per vote. None of this bullshit riders on "must-pass" bills.
If you haven't guessed im in Kalifornia, and yes I voted, I voted NO on almost everyt
Re:From TFA... (Score:4, Informative)
It's not a wasted vote, as people would have you believe. Sure... they might not get into office, but the percentage they pull down this election is the basis for how seriously they are taken in the next election. It only takes getting around 5% of the votes for the media to start picking them up with "wow! an underdog!" stories and for them to start getting federal campaign money. And once they get those, they get invited to debates and such which instantly boosts them to double digit percentages and has them winning many local elections.
Rolling coverage of voting precinct issues (Score:5, Informative)
Each story is timed-stamped so you know how fresh/stale the story is.
You've done it (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:You've done it (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:You've done it (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm awfully sure that some script kiddie moron can't alter tens of thousands of paper ballots instantly with a fucking Excel hack.
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What, in the rubbish bin? Or in the "we'll-only-count-these-if-it's-a-close-one" pile, like absentee ballots?
Until the ENTIRE tabulation process is open to the public, I will never assume that my vote is counted. I.E., the votes should be counted in the room where they were cast, once the polls have closed. No one enters, no one leaves until the counting is done, with a glass window so that the public can
cam i underline that comment? (Score:4, Insightful)
if you do not vote, you forfeit all right to complain about anything your government does until november 2008 (by which time, you will have learned your lesson and will vote, right?)
the gore bush fiasco back in 2000 should have finally once and for all taught everyone how much their vote really does matter
imagine the state of the world today had the vote tally been slightly different back in 2000
if the government does something you don't like from 2007-2008, and you do not vote today, then go find a mirror, and look at yourself for blame
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To paraphrase another post yesterday: this is wrong every time it is said.
This is a representative government, so the elected officials represent ME, if I voted for them or not. I didn't vote for Bush in '04, so can I not complain about his actions?
Say I go out and vote Democrat today, and a Republican wins. Do I then lose my ri
Re:cam i underline that comment? (Score:4, Interesting)
The voice I have is one of disgust and contempt at the system in general, and I feel I can express that quite well without going out to a voting station and performing in a purely symbolic gesture when the significance would be lost at the counting office as it would just get thrown away.
if you do not vote, you forfeit all right to complain about anything your government does until november 2008 (by which time, you will have learned your lesson and will vote, right?)
Please explain the logic of this. I hear this argument used every election and no one's bothered justifying it. Please back this statement up with a reason.
Re:cam i underline that comment? (Score:4, Insightful)
It is true that the third parties don't win, but this does two things:
- If a third party starts getting enough votes, it will convince one of the mainstream parties to co-opt the issue giving them votes. This is a good thing. Third parties may not win but they force the main parties to stay in touch with the electorate. (As it happens we're a bit disconnected from that at the moment, and the third parties provide a Nuclear Option, which is that if one of the two main parties disconnect from voters and refuse to reconnect, a third party can supplant them. I still consider it a high probability that a third party will emerge sometime in the next decade.)
- You are doing more than just saying "none of the above", you are saying what kind of "none of the above" you're voting. A Libertarian none-of-the-above is very different than a Green none-of-the-above. Also, since you basically know the candidate won't win, you don't really have to know anything about the candidate; it doesn't matter if the Libertarian candidate is the typical loon they seem to nominate, what matters is the fact that you voted Libertarian. (I use that party in this example because A: I trend that way and B: My goodness do they ever nominate loonies, which I can say since I trend that way.
By the way, I have practiced what I preached before. I also personally recommend that you only do this for races that you truly don't care about or where the conclusion is forgone, but you are of course free to vote any way you choose.Testing time? (Score:3, Insightful)
Add Pennsylvania to the list (Score:5, Informative)
This whole notion of going electronic for the sake of going electronic, which is what it feels like, is bullshit. For almost two decades I've been using the "fill in the oval" voting method and it's worked fine. Sometimes change for the sake of change is not necessarily a good idea.
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Hear, hear.
In nominally backwater Oklahoma, we've used the fill-in-the-arrow-with-the-black-marker ScanTron system for 15+ years. It's very clean and neat, and we've never had any problems with it. The optical scanner does the tally quickly. It lets you know immediately if there's a problem. And the paper trail is the heavy card stock ballot itself. Best of all, every polling station in the entire state uses the same system set up
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Today? (Score:4, Funny)
Go Vote! (Score:2)
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I witnessed the Problem TODAY and here is the Fix (Score:4, Informative)
I re-tapped the square for "Jim Davis", this time using my nail instead of the tip of my finger, and the check mark moved from "Charlie Crist" to "Jim Davis".
Want to know how to fix this? Don't put the most important square as the FIRST box that someone has to click. Make it something UNIMPORTANT or better yet, give us a TEST / CALIBRATION SEQUENCE for each user before any voting can begin.
Never assume your average user knows how to use your newfangled touch-screen machines.
Re:I witnessed the Problem TODAY and here is the F (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe the power of Crist was compelling you?
Re:I witnessed the Problem TODAY and here is the F (Score:2)
Stay informed on voting irregularities (Score:4, Informative)
ProtectOurVotes.org [protectourvotes.org]
Election Protection 365 [ep365.org]
Video The Vote [videothevote.org]
VeektheVote (cellphone video reports) [veekthevote.com]
National hotlines:
1-866-OUR VOTE (1-866-687-8683) (website here)
1-888-SAV-VOTE (1-888-728-8683)(voting machine problems)
Also dailykos.com (liberal) has some good coverage, and I know I'll be watching Jon Stewart tonight for his comedic (and often insightful) coverage.
Vote by mail (Score:3, Informative)
My understanding is that Oregon has seen an increase in voter participation since adopting the vote-by-mail system.
Vote by mail is the answer (Score:2)
Fortunately it sounds like the idea might be catching on other places. There's a Vote By Mail Project [votebymailproject.org] that discusses the idea, plus some politicians are talking about it [oregonlive.com] to other folks too. Interesting times.
no suprise (Score:5, Interesting)
Where I was the official was so pissed at the machines he said loudly to someone on a phone... "The paper ballots dont need a reboot! why should we use this junk?"
Voter Fraud? (Score:5, Funny)
Georgia too... (Score:2)
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On a serious note, all of our ballots in my Georgia district were working properly when I was there this morning. I certainly think we'll be more aware of voting issues in this election but I'm not so sure that's because there will be more voting irregularities than usual.
Heck, I'm in Cuba and I've already voted six times (Score:5, Funny)
Went and voted today. Paper Trail! (Score:2)
However, I was THRILLED to see that the Diebold machines I voted on included an auditable paper trail that I was shown and could verify before it was chomped into the machine for keeping. One problem down, 900 to go.
I *might* have noticed a calibration issue with the touch screen, but I'm not sure that it wasn't a programming error. Several local elections had only 1 cand
Electronic machines don't have to be bad (Score:2)
Although I think the source code to voting machines should be publicly available, I feel confident that the paper receipt is accurate. The important thing that needs to be done is random paper recounts to ma
Voting Halls (Score:2)
Simple yet nostalgic, and you have someone to hang if the crowd is obviously louder than
I just voted on a touchscreen machine... (Score:2)
Ah. Well one thing's evident. (Score:2)
A wild guess (Score:4, Insightful)
My guess is that, to the world's (and US ?) surprise, republicans will win by a small margin, explaining it by the last day of campaign.
And now the scary part : people will buy it.
I Voted... 3 Weeks Ago! (Score:3, Insightful)
I already voted Absentee, and probably will do so from now on, every chance I get.
Absentee Ballots are the way to go:
* No campaginer gauntlet outside the polling place.
* No long lines at the polls.
* No clueless or senile volunteer workers that have to be shown where you are on the Registered Voter Roster, even when you fill out your "application to vote form" legibly. (God Bless the elderly, but please, keep them away from being a polling place volunteer. It's frustrating, every time I have voted in person.)
* No clueless or senile volunteer workers that have to be shown the VOTING PROCEDURES, because you know what they are and THEY DON'T. (That's also maddening.)
* No touch screens.
* No hacker-inviting electronic voting machines.
* No harassment from "election monitors".
* No screaming, colicky brat kids that were dragged there by their parents. (God Bless the children, but please... stay out of the damn polling place until of legal voting age!)
My voting experience was much nicer this time. Ten minutes of marking a paper ballot, stuffing an envelope, and off to turn the thing in.
Now if only there were technology to filter out political ads for those of us who already cast our ballots...
The day off! (Score:3, Insightful)
As for paper ballots I think we should stick with them until we get a system ironed out. At the same time they are not perfect either. Remember the Buccanon debacle in the Florida 00 election.
I'd like to see each voter get a random "card" with a bar code on it. This would be unique for everyone and handed out randomly at the polling station. Then you would stick that card into a machine which would record your vote and the bar code. Then later you could go online and scan it in...or some office...and "verify" your vote. Furthermore I think we should use two different system from two different vendors. Even better to have the Republicans choose one and the Democrats the other. Then when the country goes to verify the vote they can make sure that both machines match up.
When you walk away from the machine(s) you should get a paper copy that you can use to double verify. If we can spend 100's of billions on war, I think we can spend some cash on our election systems.
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For the record (Score:4, Interesting)
So, that was my experience. Judge as you will
Indiana info misleading - voting mostly going ok. (Score:3, Insightful)
Gilmore fans who object to showing ID without a warrant are offered provisional ballots, which then don't get counted. My lawsuit about that continues: joellpalmer.blogspot.com [blogspot.com]
In Delaware County, home of Ball state, polling hours have been extended to 8:30 pm because MicroVote machines weren't working at first.
Electionlawblog.org [electionlawblog.org]is one place to follow glitch reports during the day.
+2 informative insightful
Famous last words (Score:5, Informative)
Apparently somebody doesn't pay attention to history. I recall more than a handful of reports where machines were recording negative votes, more votes than registered voters, and even in this very same story, machines not working and poll workers not knowing how to use them. Somebody also apparently didn't watch the "Hacking Democracy" documentary or those reports on hacking the Diebold machines.
Paper ballots don't crash, pens don't need instructions, and any damned fool can put the pen and ballot together, and the same damned fool can read and count them.
For those who say that there's no point in being a luddite and refusing to accept electronic voting, I say this: in this matter, I'll be a luddite, thankyouverymuch.
Remember, "To err is human; to really fuck it up takes a computer."
The foxnews.com story has the expected spin... (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's Fox News' roundup [foxnews.com] on the voting shenanigans.
It leads with coverage of the voter intimidation in the Virgina Allen/Web race (in which registered democrats are receiving calls informing them, incorrectly, that their polling place has changed), but does not list the candidates or parties involved. And the description of the incidents was written to make them sound vague:
Note the "use" of "quotes" around "single" words when they're really not "necessary."
Okay, so they're not naming names, right? But the second report in the Fox News article gets right to the point:
<Borat>very nice.</Borat>
And then Fox News found it necessary to report some graffiti with a Republican's name in it:
...but no mention whatsoever that Colorado Democrat candidate Jay Fawcett's HQ was also vandalized overnight.
And more naming names:
Compare this to Fox News' coverage of the incidents reported last week in Florida and Texas, in which people who tried to vote Democrat had their votes changed to Republican. Oh yeah, there wasn't any (please post a link if I'm wrong).
And then back to giving vague details that don't mention party affiliation:
My experience today. Silicon Valley CA area. (Score:4, Interesting)
After casting my votes on all the people, and measures, and propositions, it put up a screen to review. I confirmed, and then it printed the ballot on a roll of paper in a locked box for me to visually confirm. It had a form of "voter id" hash on it, and a "polling location" as well. Then at the bottom, a multi-row barcode and a few other visual/human readable 'checksums'
Perfect? Maybe or maybe not. Maybe it was a good fake, and I'd have to watch the paper rolls getting moved. At least there is the appearance of a paper-based audit trail as well as solutions to many of the other concerns I've seen raised here, and many other forums.
Old Fashioned Way (Score:3, Interesting)
My voting experience (Score:4, Interesting)