Mechanical voting

Dials

By July 1936, IBM had mechanized voting and ballot tabulation for single transferable vote elections. Using a series of dials, the voter could record up to twenty ranked preferences to a punched card, one preference at a time. Write-in votes were permitted. The machine prevented a voter from spoiling their ballot by skipping rankings and by giving the same ranking to more than one candidate. A standard punched-card counting machine would tabulate ballots at a rate of 400 per minute.^[12]

Punched card voting

Punched card systems employ a card (or cards) and a small clipboard-sized device for recording votes. Voters punch holes in the cards with a ballot marking device. Typical ballot marking devices carry a ballot label that identifies the candidates or issues associated with each punching position on the card, although in some cases, the names and issues are printed directly on the card. After voting, the voter may place the ballot in a ballot box, or the ballot may be fed into a computer vote tabulating device at the precinct.^{[citation needed]}

The idea of voting by punching holes on paper or cards originated in the 1890s^[22] and inventors continued to explore this in the years that followed. By the late 1890s John McTammany's voting machine was used widely in several states. In this machine, votes were recorded by punching holes in a roll of paper comparable to those used in player pianos, and then tabulated after the polls closed using a pneumatic mechanism.^{[citation needed]}

Punched-card voting was proposed occasionally in the mid-20th century,^[23] but the first major success for punched-card voting came in 1965, with Joseph P. Harris' development of the Votomatic punched-card system.^[24][25][26] This was based on IBM's Port-A-Punch technology. Harris licensed the Votomatic to IBM.^[27] William Rouverol built the prototype system.

The Votomatic system^[28] was very successful and widely distributed. By the 1996 Presidential election, some variation of the punched card system was used by 37.3% of registered voters in the United States.^[29]

Votomatic style systems and punched cards received considerable notoriety in 2000 when their uneven use in Florida was alleged to have affected the outcome of the U.S. presidential election. The Help America Vote Act of 2002 "effectively banned pre-scored punched card ballots."^[30] Votomatics were "last used in 2 counties in Idaho in the 2014 General Election".^[30]

Optical scanning

In an optical scan voting system, or marksense, each voter's choices are marked on one or more pieces of paper, which then go through a scanner. The scanner creates an electronic image of each ballot, interprets it, creates a tally for each candidate, and usually stores the image for later review.

The voter may mark the paper directly, usually in a specific location for each candidate. Or the voter may select choices on an electronic screen, which then prints the chosen names, and a bar code or QR code summarizing all choices, on a sheet of paper to put in the scanner.^[31]

Hundreds of errors in optical scan systems have been found, from feeding ballots upside down, multiple ballots pulled through at once in central counts, paper jams, broken, blocked or overheated sensors which misinterpret some or many ballots, printing which does not align with the programming, programming errors, and loss of files.^[32]

Direct-recording electronic (DRE)

In a DRE voting machine system, a touch screen displays choices to the voter, who selects choices, and can change their mind as often as needed, before casting the vote. Staff initialize each voter once on the machine, to avoid repeat voting. Voting data are recorded in memory components, and can be copied out at the end of the election.

Most of these machines also print names of chosen candidates on paper for the voter to verify, though some studies have indicated that fewer than 40% of voters do so.^[33] The paper ballot, whether paper tape or separate ballot sheets, the paper ballot is securely stored, creating a voter-verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) that can be used for election audits and recounts if needed.

For machines without VVPAT, there is no record of individual votes to check. For machines with VVPAT, checking is more expensive than with paper ballots, because on the flimsy thermal paper in a long continuous roll, staff often lose their place, and the printout has each change by each voter, not just their final decisions.^[34]

Problems have included public web access to the software, before it is loaded into machines for each election, and programming errors which increment different candidates than voters select.^[32] The Federal Constitutional Court of Germany found that with existing machines could not be allowed because they could not be monitored by the public.^[35]

According to University of Iowa computer scientist Douglas Jones, a specialist in the use of computers in elections, there has been no evidence of hackers accessing electronic voting machines in public use, though some hacks have been achieved in controlled laboratory settings.^[36]

Precinct-count voting system

A precinct-count voting system is a voting system that tallies ballots at the polling place. Precinct-count machines typically analyze ballots as they are cast. This approach allows for voters to be notified of voting errors such as overvotes and can prevent spoilt votes. After the voter has a chance to correct any errors, the precinct-count machine tallies that ballot. Vote totals are made public only after the close of polling. DREs and precinct scanners have electronic storage of the vote tallies and may transmit results to a central location over public telecommunication networks.

Central-count voting system

A central count voting system is a voting system that tallies ballots from multiple precincts at a central location. Central count systems are also commonly used to process absentee ballots.

Central counting can be done by hand, and in some jurisdictions, central counting is done using the same type of voting machine deployed at polling places, but since the introduction of the Votomatic punched-card voting system and the Norden Electronic Vote Tallying System in the 1960s, high speed ballot tabulators have been in widespread use, particularly in large metropolitan jurisdictions. Today, commodity high-speed scanners sometimes serve this purpose, but special-purpose ballot scanners are also available that incorporate sorting mechanisms to separate tallied ballots from those requiring human interpretation.^[37]

Voted ballots are typically placed into secure ballot boxes at the polling place. Stored ballots and/or Precinct Counts are transported or transmitted to a central counting location. The system produces a printed report of the vote count, and may produce a report stored on electronic media suitable for broadcasting, or release on the Internet.