The Voting System Assessment Project has introduced plans to overhaul the Los Angeles voting system. From the LA Times:
County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan envisions a future system in which, instead of being directed to designated polling stations on a single Tuesday, voters will be able to choose from hundreds of voting centers around the county during a 10-day window leading up to election day.
There, instead of marking their selections with pen and paper, they will enter their selections on touch-screen ballot-marking devices, print out a paper ballot to review their selections, and feed the ballot back into the machine to be stored and counted.
According to Doug Chapin, the director of the Program for Excellence in Election Administration at the University of Minnesota:
The word “transformative” gets thrown around a lot these days, but I think it’s fair to say that what LA County is doing with this new system will genuinely transform the field of elections, not just in the final product but in the effort to look at the entire election process to determine the best approach – and then design a system that fits those specifications rather than look for an existing system that’s close enough. Kudos to everyone involved in VSAP, including Dean Logan (and more importantly, the policymakers who had the faith to invest public dollars in the project) for bringing the future of elections in California – and elsewhere! – another step closer to reality.
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