[E-voting] Question on optical scan

[Aengus Lawlor]

On Wednesday, January 19, 2005 3:01 PM [GMT],
Brian O'Byrne <bobyrne at statesoft.ie> wrote:


Brian, I'm a member of the list, and I receive a copy of everything sent
to the list. Please don't cc me on any replies to my posts.

> I think a significant chunk of what the banks and An Post deal with is
> pre-printed and/or typewritten.
>
> In both cases that part of the workload that is handwritten is
> handled through manual systems. Handwritten cheques or lodgement
> slips are read by tellers and typed into systems. An Post's annual
> labor relations problems at Christmas show how much manual effort
> goes into processing the handwritten addresses on cards.
>
> OCR from typewritten text is more reliable than OCR from handwritten
> text.
>
> To get typewritten ballots you will need to take up Margaret's
> suggestion of a printer to help the voter write the ballot, which
> leads to the suggestion that the printer should record and count the
> ballot, bringing you back to DRE.

I disagree with Margarets concerns about printers - let them
count/record the votes, and use that to give a "quick tally" that can be
released on the night, while the formal count occurs the following day.
They won't have a record of any "corrected" votes, where the user
returned their ballot to the presiding officer for a replacement, so
they won't have an accurate enough count to be official, but will be
close enough for the headline writers in the following mornings papers.

But even without printers, your understanding of how the postoffice
system works isn't complete. A lot of mail is handled automatically,
even handwritten addresses, if written in block capitals, can be
recognized, and only marginal addresses are shunted off for manual
interpretation. A vote counting system could do this too.

Even with a pencil and paper system, we're not talking about
"handwriting recognition" - we're talking about recognizing characters
from just 10 digits. With clear examples posted showing how to write the
numbers, there's a fairly small amount of room for confusion, and what
room does exist will be lessened by the fact that the numbers aren't
random - you can't have a 7 if you don't already have a 6.

Aengus