Good point, and here I will provide an anecdote:
I just voted in central NJ. This year, they are using new voting machines that I have not seen before. In the past, you would press a button to select the candidate you wanted to vote for, and a green light would illuminate in the box by that candidate's name. Once you made all your selections, you pressed a "Vote" button (or something like that), the machine gave out a few beeps, and that was it.
I voted just a few minutes ago, and this time, I was handed a long paper slip (about 3"x15"), with a barcode on the top edge. Once in the voting booth, I fed the paper slip into the machine, which brought it up in a window. Once I made my ballot selections and hit "Cast Ballot", the machine cycled the slip, and it came back up in the window, where it had my choices printed below the bar code. I then had to hit "Vote" or something like that, and the paper slip was pulled up out of the window, presumably into a ballot box of some sort (and hopefully not just into a circular file!).
I think this is an improvement, as there is now a paper ballot of my vote that could be reviewed for auditing or challenging if necessary. At least, that's what I am hoping.
Yup—many states have made a wide variety of improvements, but the most important one is that almost all states stopped sending out blank ballots to all registered voters.
That was the number one cause of cheating in 2020.
Many of those “registered voters” did not exist at all.
They were vacant lots and/or homes or apartments, small businesses, churches etc etc etc.
The Democratic activist groups collected those ballots in the mail and then cast votes with them.
It is kinda hard to have nonexistent people show up and vote on election day.
:-)
DE using these types of machines also. I am on the local municipal election board and we used these machines last cycle (our elections are non-partisan and in March) and we had a training session. Was fairly impressed with these machines as in theory a paper trail is created to back the machine tally.
We have those machines here in Bexar Co Texas. On ours when one presses ‘Vote’, the slip prints out your selections in code and English. Hopefully the codes match the printed data.
Good system - electronic recording of the vote and a paper trail to boot. I took a picture of the document with my phone camera before feeding it into the paper tabulator.
My paper ballot came in the mail and it went into a box the other day. And I have notice it was received. Next I’ll get notice it’s been recorded. This town and county will go 65%-35% Trump, so no worries there. Won’t matter, Harris will win Colorado easily.