Votomatic
 Votomatic(Electronic voting)    | |
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| Punch card system to create ballots that can be electronically tabulated |
The Votomatic voting machine (a type of punch card system) is system for marking cards/ballots used in elections, that can then be electronically scanned and tabulated. The card/ballot is placed in a clipboard-sized device for recording votes. Voters punch holes in the ballot with the supplied punch device at the position that is marked for their candidate on the ballot. After voting usually the voter would place the ballot in a box, from there to be fed into a computerized vote-tabulating device.[1]
History
"In 1962, Joseph P. Harris, a political science professor at UC Berkeley, came up with the idea of placing a standard IBM card in a ballot holder that displayed the candidates and issues, punching holes in the card to indicate voter choices and then counting these votes by running them through a computer.
The result was “Votomatic,” still the most widely used electronic vote-counting system in the nation.
In 1968, Harris sold his idea to IBM, but after a few years and many mishaps the giant computer company decided that the small profits to be made from selling vote-tabulation systems were not worth the enormous potential for bad publicity. Advertisement
In 1969, IBM licensed five companies around the country to sell Votomatic. The most successful was Computer Election Services of Berkeley, which sold hundreds of the tabulation systems, mostly in the West, in the next few years."[2]
Concerns
- Full article: Hanging chad
- Full article: Hanging chad
After the Florida recount debacle of 2000 effectively retired the Votomatic system, leaving standing the optical-scan system, electronic touch screens.[3]
