The passage of the Help America Vote Act in 2002 required new voting systems to be accessible. In the case of the Belgian magnetic-stripe cards and Kazakh smart cards, independent voter verification of the contents of the ballot card is impossible. One weakness of punched card ballots is that, while voters can, in principle, verify that the punches on the ballots correspond to the choices the voter intended, this is difficult. The AIS "Sailau" voting system developed in Belarus and Kazakhstan is conceptually similar to the Belgian system, except that it records votes on smart cards instead of bar codes or magnetic stripe cards. Belgium continues to use ballot marking devices, although the new machines use thermal printers to print human readable text along with a machine-readable bar code. The Jites and Digivote systems used in Belgium are similar to this, although they use magnetic stripe cards instead of the bar codes used in the TI patent to record the ballot. In 1991, a Belgian, Julien Anno working with a group from Texas Instruments filed a patent application for an electronic ballot marker. The needs of minority voters also drove the development of electronic voting in Belgium. One of the major benefits of the Votomatic was that the machines were inexpensive enough that a polling place could have several machines, each with a ballot label printed in a different language. ![]() The dominance of the Votomatic ended abruptly following the Florida election recount of 2000. By 1992, the Votomatic had replaced mechanical voting machines as the dominant voting system used in the United States. By 1980, the Votomatic system was used by over 29% of U.S. IBM marketed the Votomatic until 1968, when it spun off Computer Election Systems Inc. This was one of the first machines to attract serious thinking about accessibility John Ahmann filed for a patent on a punching stylus for the Votomatic adapted for use by voters with motor disabilities in 1986. ![]() The machines cost only $185 each in 1965 dollars, and weighed only 6 pounds. īallot cards punched on a Votomatic could be tabulated by standard punched card tabulating machines or sorted on card sorters. Joseph Harris filed his first patent on what would become the Votomatic in 1962. This was based on the Port-A-Punch, a handheld device for recording data on pre-scored punched cards. The first commercially successful ballot marking device was the Votomatic. None of these machines was commercially successful. This was incorporated into a full-sized voting booth with voter interface that resembled a mechanical voting machine, but recording on ballot cards that could be tabulated on standard punched-card tabulating machines. In 1937, Frank Carrell, working for IBM applied for a patent on a ballot marking device that recorded on standard punched cards. The punched cards used by these early machines were not designed to be compatible with any other data processing equipment. The patents for these machines suggest that their primary goal was to provide for mechanical vote tabulation while retaining paper ballots that could be used to verify the operation of the tabulator in the event of any question. Urban Iles filed a proposal for a more sophisticated system in 1892. Kennedy Dougan filed for patents on a punched-card system using a ballot marking device in 1890. The first ballot marking devices specifically designed for use in elections emerged in the late 19th century along with proposals to use various punched-card ballot forms. Ballot marking device defines a broad category, while electronic ballot marker excludes older mechanical devices, and assistive voting device only applies when the device serves as an assistive device. These terms are not, strictly speaking, synonyms. The Canadian government appears to prefer the term assistive voting device. The Minnesota and IEEE P 1622 glossaries, on the other hand, refer to EBM and electronic ballot marker (or electronically-assisted ballot marker). For example, Hart InterCivic and the state of Colorado only list BMD and ballot marking device in their glossaries. There is no consensus about the terminology used to refer toīallot marking devices or electronic ballot markers, and whereĪ jurisdiction uses one term, there is frequently no reference
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