Connection: Ballot Issues

Washington and Idaho use a wide range of voting systems, from optical scanners and punch cards to paper ballots.

Voters in Spokane have punched computer cards since 1972, when the county became one of the first in the state to switch from lever voting machines. County Auditor Vicky Dalton will receive $350,000 next year to begin updating the system, but the voting devices at the polling places will not be the first things to be changed.

Kootenai County voters use an optical scanner system to cast and count their ballots.

Which is better depends on who’s asking, where and when. Many of the controversies in the Florida election recounts center around punch-card ballots that may or may not have been properly marked.

But the recount for the U.S. Senate race in Washington showed counties with punch cards had a smaller rate of change, on average, than counties using optical scanner systems.

Counties using punch-card ballots saw their vote totals change, on average, .038 percent. Those using optical scan systems had an average change more than 10 times higher, at .42 percent.

In part, the percentage for optical scan systems is so high because in Douglas County, a group of write-in ballots were apparently counted twice. That gave Douglas a 6.2 percent change between its original count and the recount.

But even with that problem set aside, optical-scanner counties had percentage changes that were more than four times higher than counties with punch cards.