Thanks for your comment Charlene.  The term "paper ballots" refers to manually
counted paper ballots.

There are, in fact, many counties, even relatively large ones that use
"optically scanned" ballots.  But I was not referring to those counties when I
used the term paper ballots.

To be even more specific.  There are five different methods used for counting
ballots in the US:

    -- Paper ballots (9% of counties, less than 1% of voters)
    -- Lever machines (12% of counties and 16% of voters)
    -- Punch cards (17% of counties and 32% of people)
    -- Optical Scan systems (43% of counties and 29% of voters)
    -- Direct Record Electronic systems (10% of counties and 12% of people)

In addition about 8% of the counties use a mixture of these five systems.

Note that punch cards, DRE systems, and Lever machines are disproportinately
used in counties with large populations while paper ballots and optical scan
systems are disproportionately used in smaller counties.  (To see this compare
the percentage of counties with the percentage of people.  If the percentage of
people is bigger than the percentage of counties, then the system is used in
counties with larger populations.)

Henry Brady
Professor of Political Science and Public Policy
University of California, Berkeley


Charlene Simmons wrote:

Several California counties with more than 60,000 people use optically
scanned paper ballots
(e.g., San Francisco, San Joaquin, Contra Costa, Santa Barbara, San Mateo,
Fresno, Placer, Marin, etc.).