Login
You're viewing the assemblag.es public feed.
  • Paco Hopepaco@infosec.exchange
    Oct 22, 2026, 4:48 PM

    @blogdiva There was another simple and practical reason to dislike the direct recording electronic voting machines (DRE). You can only support as many simultaneous voters as you have machines in the room.

    When I was an election official in 2008, we had 8 DRE machines that were basically touch-screen laptops. Each one cost THOUSANDS of dollars. I could support 8 simultaneous voters. No more. Big mad rush? Tough. Wait until someone's done.

    Today we use paper and optical scanners. I can fill a room full of privacy partitions, chairs, tables, and pens. I can easily have dozens of people all reading and marking their ballots at the same time. And the scanner is quick.

    Big, mad rush? Get more tables, chairs and pens. That's usually pretty easy. Getting another DRE machine quickly in the middle of the day is essentially impossible.

    A queue at a ballot scanner is a really different issue than waiting for a turn at a machine that displays the ballot. If someone takes 10 minutes to think through their paper ballot, which is their right, that's no big deal. If they take 10 minutes at one of a small number of DRE machines, it affects other voters.

    💬 3🔄 4⭐ 0

Replies

  • 💬 0🔄 3⭐ 0
  • Space Catitude 🚀TerryHancock@realsocial.life
    Oct 22, 2026, 5:19 PM

    @paco @blogdiva

    I mean, personally, I kind of enjoy filling in the little bubbles on our paper ballots.

    They offered something called an "express ballot" option. I didn't investigate or see the actual kiosk, but I think it's an electronic machine that prints out a filled-in ballot for you. Not sure about the benefits of that.

    I guess i could see that if you had mobility issues, like palsy, but as it is, I always carefully fill out the form and then double check to make sure I didn't make a mistake down-ballot.

    I presume I could get a replacement ballot if I screwed it up -- I've never had that happen yet.

    💬 1🔄 1⭐ 0
  • Paco Hopepaco@infosec.exchange
    Oct 22, 2026, 5:32 PM

    @TerryHancock If they're calling it "express" it might be an ExpressVote machine.

    This is a ballot marking device that lets a voter navigate the ballot using a braille-enabled controller for an audio ballot. It also includes large print letters on screen, and other assistive techniques (like translation into other languages). It ultimately marks a piece of paper that can be verified by visual inspection, and then the paper is inserted into ballot scanners the same way as the other paper ballots.

    The ExpressVote is what we use in Fairfax County. And we joke that it's neither "express" nor a "vote." It's slower and it doesn't record your vote, it just marks a ballot.
    @blogdiva

    💬 1🔄 1⭐ 0
  • Space Catitude 🚀TerryHancock@realsocial.life
    Oct 22, 2026, 6:29 PM

    @paco @blogdiva

    Yeah, that's probably it. At the time, I just wanted to vote and distrusted any changes.

    Of course, I'm in a very red county, so odds are they're not effing with OUR polling places. But I'm still suspicious of everything they do.

    💬 0🔄 0⭐ 0
  • D Ingramingram@mastodon.social
    Oct 22, 2026, 8:33 PM

    @paco @blogdiva I was an election worker in Australia in 2019 for the federal election. Direct marking of ballot papers with pencil and into the ballot box is so nice an simple for the voters. The most complex thing is folding up the 1m long Senate paper to fit.

    Hand counting is done on the night (my job) and scanning counting done over the next week to fully allocate prefernces (it's a ranked choice system, effectively voting for who you dislike least).

    Image attached toot
    💬 0🔄 1⭐ 0