On Nov 3, 6:57 pm, Amy Guskin  wrote:
> >> On Wed, 3 Nov 2010 15:36:17 -0400, John W. Kennedy wrote
> HA!  What?  I mean, what is your primary method of voting?  We have optical
> ballots (ovals that you fill in with pens) that are fed into a scanner by the
> voter.  We also have the iVotronic which is only ever used by visually
> handicapped voters.  So I'm trying to understand what he/she got ink on!
Everybody /calls/ them "touchscreen", but it's not true; they're a
wall of pushbuttons and lights hidden behind a hard white,
semitransluscent plastic front. Press the name and a glowing green X
appears next to it. Functionally, they're more or less digital
versions of the old electromechanical "lever" machines.
Write-in is done by pushing the "write-in" entry for the particular
office, instead of one of the named entries, which brings up the same
green X, but blinking, then typing the name on an ergonomic nightmare
of a keyboard:
 A B C D E F G H I J K L M
----------- N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z
( is space; Enter is irrevocable)
Hitting "Enter" makes the green X steady.
When everything is done, you hit the glowing red "Cast Vote" button,
your vote is counted, and the "screen" is reset.
> We had fewer write-ins than usual this year, mainly because it was such a
> straightforward ballot.  Four races, all pretty major, so that cut down on
> people writing in their 8-year old children's names for fun.  We did get one
> "none of the above."
Where I was working, there was a major write-in campaign for the town
council. About 40% of the votes were write-in.
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