[E-voting] Question on optical scan

[Aengus Lawlor]

On Wednesday, January 19, 2005 4:07 PM [GMT],
Margaret McGaley <Margaret.McGaley at redbrick.dcu.ie> wrote:

> The sample ballot in this article:
> http://www.midwestdemocracy.org/pdf/Newsletter1Q01.pdf
> (on page 2) uses the grid format. I don't think it's very practical
> for large numbers of candidates, unfortunately.

Cultural and tradition. Americans are used to seeing their choices laid
out in a large grid (voting machines, for example, are effectively
arranged in a big grid three feet wide and two feet deep).

It's not part of our voting culture or tradition, and wouldn't be
appropriate here. Familiarity with the lotto wouldn't help, because it's
not "pick 5 from 12", it's "pick only one No.1, only 1 No.2, etc".

Does anyone have a scanner that came with OCR software? Give it a whirl
with a sheet of numbers that you write out by hand. I think you might be
surprised at how accurate it is.

(I'll try to do an example myself over the next day or two).

Aengus