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(CA) 7/09 - LOS ANGELES: WUPS! WHAT'S THIS AUTOMATED BALLOT REMAKE SYSTEM? -
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If anyone has more information on this, shoot it over to Black Box Voting. According to a press release from Los AngelesCounty, "New tools helped to automate the remake of provisional ballots during the election canvass period. . . The system was developed in-house by Department Technical Services' staff using available commercial off-the-shelf hardware. "
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"Ballot remake" is a process whereby ballots that someone deems unreadable by a voting machine are "remade" or duplicated. I've got several concerns with this process, such as:
(1) record keeping - both Contra Costa County (CA) and Minnesota had questions raised in terms of accounting for the remakes, and in the close Frankel/Coleman race in Minnesota, some of these remakes appear to have been counted twice.
(2) Automated remakes, according to a set of Diebold programmer instructions, can follow procedures that I can only describe as shocking. To wit:
quote:
"To dup a ballot, locate each of the undefined votes. Scroll up and down the ballot as needed, and choose Other Side to turn the ballot over. (Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
