Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2021 May 14

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May 14

DataVote ballot, thanks

Hi, sorry if I come back to disturb you but I am particularly passionate and attracted to this equipment. I'll be quick: the ballot below, at the end of the link page, is an absentee vote. Is it an early voting system (it should be the DataVote punch card system) Are these ballots counted like the others, that is, always from the computer during election night, or does it work differently? Thanks a lot as always. http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/english/doc/2004-10/28/content_386484.htm

No, that's not a Data Vote punch card. The Data Vote system was a device used to mark a type of Hollerith card and looked like this. The actual punched card would have been a garden-variety IBM Hollerith punch card, and may or may not have had any distinguishing features on it to even indicate what the vote was, it would have just been a piece of rectangular cardstock with some rectangular holes in it and some notches cut around the edges for alignment purposes. The Data Vote system was a way to allow the voter to punch their vote directly onto a Hollerith card which could then be fed into an ordinary IBM computer and read like any other such card. I don't know that Data Vote was in use as late as 2004; maybe? But Hollerith cards were decades outdated at that point; I can't see how even the most backwater election districts in the US would have still been using such a system; the county in question in that article is Mecklenburg County, North Carolina, a rather affluent, urban, and technologically advanced community. The paper ballot shown there looks to be of a type where the holes are punched out using a stylus or pen of some kind. Furthermore, while I could be wrong about this, I've lived in North Carolina since 2000, and have voted in every election (municipal, state, and federal, and every primary) and as long as I can remember, we've used a "fill-in-the-bubble" type optical-scanned ballot like this for as long as I can remember; it's possible there's an older system I forget, but that ballot is used by every voter in North Carolina in every election, and the absentee ballot is not different. If you vote by Absentee in North Carolina, they just mail you that very same ballot, you fill in the bubbles just like you would if voting in person, and mail it back in. Again, 2004 may have been different, but I don't ever remember seeing the ballot shown in that China Daily article. --Jayron32 15:08, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

I was mistaken. The style of optical scanned ballot has changed since 2004. Doing some research on this, I found this, which yes, now I do remember these, the "complete the arrow for your choice" ballot type. But AFAIK, these were standard across the state and used for absentee and in person voting in 2004. It should be noted that China Daily is not a particularly reliable source, and I would not put it above them to fabricate an image to support some story. I can't find ANY image of ANY ballot in Mecklenburg County from 2004 that looks anything like that; the only image I can find of that ballot is that specific one in that specific article. --Jayron32 15:34, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Scratch all of that, maybe. I just realized I was presuming the Mecklenburg County noted was North Carolina, but there are others. It may be from Mecklenburg County, Virginia. I'm unfamiliar with their ballots.--Jayron32 15:38, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Thank you very much, you have been invaluable. One last thing: you were voting like you said with optical scanner systems, but regardless of the systems themselves, North Carolina has in the past had counties that used Votomatic, etc. Were the absentee ballots of the respective counties counted in the same way? I mean, using scanners for counties that had those same systems, or punch card readers for counties that used Votomatic and so on? Then there were the other systems such as the DataVote, in fact, and so on. Again thank you so much.

Like I said, we've had optical scanner voting (two variants) since I have lived here; the ballots (while not actually from my county) looked substantially like the ones I shared with you earlier. Perhaps some NC counties used other systems at other times, but AFAIK, currently the whole state uses the same system. At what point other systems were used (such as votomatic or DataVote, etc) I am not so sure. I just know what I have experienced, and what research I just did to help you here; two different optical scan ballots (the complete the arrow version and the fill in the bubble version) and that's all I know. You may very well be right, but it hasn't been where I have lived. Previously I voted in New Hampshire (three elections, 1994, 1996 and 1998, all by absentee) and I have ABSOLUTELY no recollection of what those ballots looked like. --Jayron32 17:52, 14 May 2021 (UTC)