My 1st diary!
Numerous diaries have catalogued the extensive problems with our voting systems. I don't want to re-cap these problems for this diary; it would take too long.
We have an election system for which the results are unverifiable, either by the voters and/or the officials responsible for counting/certifying election results.
I think changes in balloting could alleviate some of the problems and improve the reliability of election results.
I suggest the use of
pre-numbered, 3-part duplicate forms for balloting. The white original would be counted, the voter would keep a pink copy, and an orange copy could be used for auditing and imaging at the Secretary of State's office.
The controls for the ballots would be similar to controls used by, for example, fedex as it picks up and delivers packages, a doctor's office that sends lab samples to a lab service, or an accounts payable department that keeps an inventory of the check stock it uses. All of these businesses use logs of some sort to track their activity. The ballots would be controlled in the same manner.
The suggested flow would work like this:
The print vendor would print the prenumbered ballots. The ballots could be identified by county, such as DENVER123456. The county election commission would issue and log out so many ballots [say, in bundles of 50-100] to the different precincts/vote centers. Personnel at the precinct/vote center would log in the prenumbered ballots, verifying what they received. These logs would be 2 or 3-part forms; 1 for the county election office, 1 for the auditor, etc.
The pollworkers should ensure that there are no missing ballots as they issue the ballots to voters, for example, if the ballot numbers skipped from DEN12345 to DEN12487, the poll worker could record the numbers DEN12346-DEN12486 as missing.
The voters would fill in the applicable bubbles or space in ink on the ballot to indicate their choices, keep the pink copy and turn in the white [original] & orange copies. The white copies would be forwarded to where-ever the counters are--I'm assuming a scanner will count the results. The orange copy would be forwarded to the auditors and eventually to the Secretary of State's office for imaging.
Provisional ballots could be a different set of numbers and colors, for example, PROVDenver12345 with blue, green, and purple colors [to make them easily identifiable in a stack of paperwork]. Again, the voter would keep one copy; the original and other copy would be forwarded for counting and auditing.
Spoiled ballots [if a person changed their mind, for example, after inking in a bubble] would be marked void on all three copies and indicated as void in the database--or maybe a bubble would be marked to indicate voided so that void status could be scanned into the database. The voter would be issued another ballot.
The ballots are scanned and counted, resulting in a final database. Portions of the database could be audited against orange copies of the ballots and the voter sign-in sheets--which should also be in duplicate or triplicate forms, with copies to the election officials, auditors, and secretary of state.
Unused ballots would be returned to the commission. Ultimately, all ballots would be accounted for, either as used, voided, or blank. If there is some discrepancy, the commission should be able to determine what happened from the tracking provided by the log sheets and the voter sign in sheets.
If the commission cannot account for all ballots or some ballots are spoiled somehow [pretend someone deliberately dumped a stack of completed ballots into the trash instead of dropping them off at the commission, or a pollworker splashed coffee all over a stack of completed ballots], it could publish the un-accounted for or spoiled ballot numbers. People who have the pink copies could submit their copy for counting, assuming they aren't concerned about confidentiality issues. If they are, then they need not respond to the commission's published list.
Voters could also call the commission to verify how their ballot was counted by asking how ballot DEN47383 was counted, again assuming that confidentiality would not be an important issue for such callers [I would certainly like to follow up on how my ballot was counted].
To summarize, the use of triplicate balloting forms could provide a trackable, auditable, and correctible method for voting that currently does not exist.