From: "John Beamish" 

Just some random thoughts:

* Florida votes using chad-producing machines.  It may be that the
"paper", "card" (whatever you want to call it) is
sufficiently "rare" that you actually need sufficiently long lead
time to actually manufacture the card stock to appropriate specification
(i.e., it's not the sort of stuff that you keep in stock for months at a
time).

* I'm not sure what the timings are in Canada, but I do know that the
ballots have been printed and have been distributed to rregional centres
about 2 weeks before the election date.  I pick them up on the Saturday and
keep them in their sealed envelopes until just before the polls open on
Monday.

It's a _somewhat_ non-trivla process to print ballots since the ballots are
printed with numbered counterfoils and then bound into batches.  I'm
guessing that there is some cutoff point at which ballots can no longer be
recreated even if a candidate drops dead on the hustings.

On Mon, 02 Oct 2006 06:54:51 -0400, Phil Payne
 wrote:

> Some of them I think I will never understand:
>
> http://abcnews.go.com/Politics/story?id=2514329&page=1
>
> "The 37-member Florida Republican Party Executive Board is set to meet
> this
> afternoon in Orlando to do just that. But because the ballots have
> already
> been printed, Foley's name cannot be removed.
>
> Even though the votes cast under Foley's name will go to the new
> candidate,
> voters may have trouble even nominally supporting the disgraced lawmaker.
> That factor increases the odds that the Democrats could pick up the seat
> -
> putting them that much closer to their goal of taking over the House."
>
> With five weeks to go?  Surely they could be reprinted.  Is anyone going
> to
> tick the "Foley" box?
>
> Anyway, this wouldn't be legal in the UK.  You have to be able to get who
> you vote for and you cannot cast a vote for someone not on the ballot.
>

--- BBBS/NT v4.01 Flag-5