HCPB's revisited

[liam_laddie]

Listening to BBC World News.. elections in Israel, parliamentary form of course...thirty-one parties!
Voters select one of (31) envelopes from a rack or bins, each of which represents a party's slate of candidates.
The envelopes have no ballots, but represent the voter's choice of party and its platform as I understood the report.

For HCPB's here in USA...BoE's claim rightly that our elections can have so many races and issues that a one-page
ballot is called a "billboard." I believe that here (Hamilton County, Ohio) the BoE sometime in the past had layouts
worked up for such an HCPB. It proved unwieldy to say the least.

What if the ballot was separated into three or four separate pages. One each for federal, state and county races/issues,
perhaps a fourth for local-only (cities, townships..) issues such as taxes, initiatives, etc. Voter would not be required
to vote all sections; this is not much different than the current option to skip a race or issue. Would require more
organization and informed poll workers at the precinct level. Have not thought this through, just a top-of-the-head
response to this radio report. Could this system work in USA? Comments?

This could allow the option of completely hand-counting the federal races and scanning of others. Certainly there'd
be an auditable record...

[Wilms]

1. Sounds plausible.

Can you think of any downside?

[nicknameless]

2. I like the idea of Federal races being hand counted.

Of course, I want *all* races hand-counted. That's the ideal. But your suggestion would certainly be a start.

:thumbsup:


R'ed