Terry:

Your breadth of information sources on this subject continues to impress me.

I have seen some stories on the various methods used for voting in the US. Like they have the 1) voting lever, 2) a ballot that is optically scanned 3) a ballot that is punched with holes 4) a ballot that is simply read by a human and counted manually.

In our community, we use the optically scanned method. The ballots are really simple. You complete the ballot by connecting a black line beside your candidate. There is absolutely no way of screwing it up. And I like the idea of the optical scan because if there is an inquiry you still have the source documents. I believe with the voting machines, there is no way to check. Like if each person coming out said they voted Democrat and the results were 100% Republican, how could you do a check?

While I have you, I have never figured out why a person has to register themselves as Republican or Democrat when Registering to vote. Am I right that this is required? And if I am right about this, why is this purpose of this?