Just voted for first time in Florida. It went very smoothly and I was impressed with their system.

[patricia92243]

I voted on a paper ballot - marked, no chads. Then it was run through a machine that showed you when it had been scanned and tallied. So, if their is a problem in Florida, we should be well prepared this time.

[Callmecrazy]

1. It was same in 2012...

Marked and scanned ballots.
Efficient and friendly volunteers. Very helpful with the elderly; even let them cut the line if they were disabled or unable to stand in line.
I was in and out in 45 minutes.

[TreasonousBastard]

2. We use a similar system here in New York...

You mark your ballot and slip it into the machine, where it is scanned and dropped into a secure ballot box. If you screw it up, it is returned. Totals are printed out on a paper tape and stored on a chip.

We've been using it for years and even close recounts have been time consuming but accurate, and opportunities for fraud are as close to nonexistent as you can reasonably get.

[CaptainTruth]

3. Only problem is, there's no way to know what the scanner scanned & recorded.

Did it record my vote correctly? I have no way of knowing, no way to verify it was recorded correctly. I don't like that. There should be a way for every voter to verify their vote was counted correctly, what I call Verified Voting.

[csziggy]

4. If the supervisor of elections knows their job you should know

Here in Leon County Florida, the supervisor has made sure that any invalid ballot is immediately kicked out of the optical scanning machines so the voter can fix the ballot. In 2000, this. county had few invalid ballots. The supervisor released a PDF file of all of the ones that the scanners would not accept and that the voters would not re-do. It was less than 200. I have a copy in my files. Most of the invalid ballots had numerous extraneous marks, duplicate votes (voted for Bush and wrote him in) or other obvious errors.

The neighboring county, Gadsden, did not have their optical scanners programmed to kick out bad ballots immediately. The rate of invalid ballots was much higher than in Leon. It was so bad that claims were made that the higher black population in Gadsden was discrinated against because of the number of invalid ballots. If the voters had a chance to fix the bad ones, the rate would haves been lower.

During the 2000 recount, our supervisor of elections helped the Gadsden County official to reprogram their scanners to kick out invalid ballots. While that did not fix the problems for that year since then the rate of bad ballots in Gadsden has dropped to roughly the same rate as in Leon.