How does my vote get from the machine in front of me all the way to the CNN screen scroll?

[ThomWV]

I go to a dilapidated schoolhouse in Masontown, West Virginia and on the second floor using a machine computerized voting machine (which generates a paper trail) I cast my ballot. At 7:00PM the polling place will close and within the hour TV screens around the nation will see an update on the crawl at the bottom of their screens that recognizes my vote; one of those 1,263,517 votes cast in my state will be mine. So how did it happen? How was the count tabulated? How was it done so quickly? Where was the information gathered and announced? Is it very different from state to state or are their Federal guidelines or laws that provide some - any - standardization to the process or is it every state for itself?

[K Gardner]

1. Good question, Thom.

[stillcool]

2. Some are counted at your polling place....

and others are centrally tabulated, and I guess as soon as they are received they are counted in at the SOS office?


Recommendation #2 – Eliminate DREs and Precinct-based Optical Scan
Voting Machines that tabulate votes at polling locations
Simply put, the elimination from polling locations of vote recording and
tabulation machines such as DREs and precinct-based optical scan machines (except to
use optical scan machines for determining overvotes and undervotes to satisfy HAVA
“second chance” requirements) and instead migrating to central counting of ballots,
ensures greater stability to the computer-based voting systems, because it eliminates
multiple points of entry to a system not adequately secured.

http://www.sos.state.oh.us/sos/upload/everest/00-SecretarysEVERESTExecutiveReport.pdf

http://brennan.3cdn.net/a56eba8edf74e9e12e_r2m6b86s2.pdf

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. Would your registrar know?

or Sec. of State?

Personally, I think CNN just makes the numbers up.

[WCIL]

4. CNN hires people

For the 2007 election, CNN contacted my son's high school principal to find a student who could be available to be at the courthouse and call in the results as soon as they were released. My son was president of the student council, and has an avid interest in politics, so he got the job. That was a very small election, and tabulating took only about 20 minutes. My son was paid $50 for his time, which included 2 practice calls in the week prior.