Re: Ada student homework ?

[Stefan Skoglund <stetson@ebox.tninet.se>]

Ken Garlington wrote:
> (a) the additional development expense: more source cards are required to be
> produced -- in Florida, 10 for president/vice-president alone; remember also
> this was a general election for a number of offices;
> 
> (b) the additional testing costs: the cards must be now extracted from the
> envelope without damage, the machines now have to count 10-20x the number of
> cards, etc.
> 
> (c) the potential for an increased error rate: accidentally reaching for the
> wrong boot, cards from one candidate put in another candidate's boot, etc.
> 
> (d) the maintenance impact: can't reuse the cards in future elections,
> greater likelihood that cards for a particular candidate might be
> prematurely exhausted, etc.

1. A envelope with a big notch.
   Large marking so that the ballot supervisor can verify that it is
   the proper card and that the voter doesn't try to fix the election by
   inserting 4 votes in the same envelope or if the box is for multiple
elections
   that the voter doesn't put the same card in multiple envelopes.

2. Sorting markings on the card - tadam you only need one box.

3. The clear text edge marking is for the ballot supervisor.

4. Cards shouldn't be reused because that is like asking for problems
!!!

5. The voting procedure should be arranged such that people with
   kind of handicap shouldn't have big problems and well pushin holes
with
   a pen doesn't match that requirement.

Here in Sweden the voting procedure is like this:
Simple printed cards of different color for the elections
ie municipal, regional and Riksdagen (swedish parliament).
On the card the party's name is printed together with a list of party
delegates to that assembly in a ranking ie the party have a say about
who gets
the seat. The voter can cross-over a delegate which could affect the
decision later
on. 
One box for each election and the supervisor before droping
the envelopes into its box checks that the card is of the proper
color.

Most circuits is small enough to allow hand-counting in most cases.