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Re: CA baseheads



Remeber, it is a BOND issue on the March ballot, and may not pass.  Notwithstanding that we all clearly agree on the ignorance involved here, we still need to look at this.
 
I think we need to count on 3 to 4 machines in a precinct location (didn't see that in your formula).  The Nov. 2000 presidential averaged 17 races with 19 voting positions in that election.  Let's double it to 40 voting positions (I think you used 90, which may be the case sometimes).  Assuming 1 line of text per candidate position, that's about 7" per voter x 250 voters or rougly 145'.  Let's assume I'm off by x2. That's still 300'.  That is one roll change on each machine.  In theory that's probably doable.   
 
I was at the SOS office yesterday in CA. and as Deborah will tell you, every one, including the State's own consultant, thought this was complete ignorance.  However, if it is law, I don't know what choice we have.  I agree that our lobbyists didn't do a good job with this - and neither did Sequoia's or ESS.  But, we still better begin looking at a design or sorts.
 
 I see a short label field (4-6 characters) to distinguish the race, and 18 characters or so for the first initial of candidate and last name on a single line.  I guess I'm thinking about how to accomplish this at this point rather than fight it.  The ignorance is again with the politicians and their staff, and the lack of horse power we have at that level.
----- Original Message -----
From: Ken Clark
Sent: Tuesday, October 23, 2001 8:50 AM
Subject: CA baseheads

Any voting system purchased using bond funds that does not
require a voter to directly mark on the ballot must produce, at the
time the voter votes his or her ballot or at the time the polls are
closed, a paper version or representation of the voted ballot or of
all the ballots cast on a unit of the voting system.  The paper
version shall not be provided to the voter but shall be retained by
elections officials for use during the 1 percent manual recount or
other recount or contest

 

Just some rough numbers.  To print out the ballots in a human readable form when the polls close, it is going to take one line per voting position per ballot on our AVTS tape.  That doesn't even include race/ballot/precinct information that also has to be on there somewhere, but lets ignore that for now.  Typical California Primary ballot has 90 voting positions.  Typical California polling place has 1000 voters.  Our AVTS printer is 6 lines per inch.  And finally, lets say I am high by a factor of two on one these estimates.

That is 625 feet of paper, or roughly two football fields.

Obviously we are not paying our lobbyists enough.

Ken