BBV - Washington County, WI prints some absentee ballots

[harmonyguy]

"Washington County was able to provide a small number of absentee ballots to all municipal clerks who needed them Monday by using a special computer software program and their own office printers, Chief Deputy Clerk Brenda Jaszewski said. She said a commercial printer would do the rest later, for a total of 12,115, as some town clerks had said they wouldn't need the ballots until Thursday, after they returned from a state towns convention."

http://www.jsonline.com/news/metro/oct04/264070.asp

Say WHAT ????? Now there's good security for ya."Pardon me while I just print up a few more ballots here". Anyone know what equipment they use to count absentee ballots in Washinton County? I wonder how it deals with the 'office printer' toner or ink?

HG

[Boredtodeath]

1. Absentee ballots produced by GEMS

are standard postcript files. One of the Diebold selling points was all the money states could save printing their own ballots.

Printer options in the software are:
\\GALILEO\qms860ps
\\GALILEO\risops
Acrobat Distiller
Acrobat PDF Writer
AGFA-ProSet 9800
Default PostScript Printer
HPLaserJet 4000 Series PS
HPLaserJet 5000 Series PS
HPLaserJet 8000 Series PS
Linotronic 330 v 52.3
Linotronic 630 V 3.3 J GES

[harmonyguy]

2. I don't know if it's GEMs or not, but

as I understand it the original concept was to have the postscript file sent to a Printing plant for bulk printing, not to a laser printing for local printing. Of course, that begs the question, what's the difference?

The difference lies mainly in the nature of the ink used. As is discussed in the now-infamous Diebold memos, there are problems with residual toner, and toner flake-off when using laser printers, sufficient enough to confuse the infrared sensors in some models of the Diebold scanners. As a result, more rejected or mis-read ballots. This is one of the same reasons why the type of paper and the color and type of ink are so important with optical scan ballots. Hence the need to 'certify' that a particular print shop knows what paper and ink to use.

HG

[RedEagle]

3. Kick! N/M