Maryland experimented with a new voting system last week

[thewayne]

Rather interesting. First, each ballot is numbered (they are already so they can account for spoiled ballots). Second, you use a special pen to mark your candidate. When you mark your candidate, a hidden code is revealed, and you can go online and enter your ballot number and verify that your vote was properly counted for the selections that you made.

It's also inexpensive, using high-end commercial scanners, coming in at half the cost of dedicated systems.

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2009/11/scantegrity

Comments

[silveradept]

This looks like a good foray into ensuring that votes are accurately recorded and counted. This system will be quietly killed because of it by Diebold or others who have a stake in ensuring elections are closed-source.

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

Diebold sold off their election systems to a competitor and is no longer in the biz, but that doesn't mean that someone else couldn't be similarly inclined.

[silveradept]

Considering how many people there are that want the ability to buy the vote counters if they feel they're not going to win the normal way, there are going to be lots of people who think closed-source secret code machines are definitely in order.