For countries like Australia with the "below the line" preferential voting system, it would be handy if voting machines had NFC/2DBarcode support for auto filling the voting screen.

This would allow for using websites or smartphone apps to generate preferences that most closely matches the voter's intention.

2D barcode mode will also be useful for on the day distribution of flyer's by political parties (or even non specific political parties), to hand out voting settings suggestion in the the political flyers on voting day.

Even in first past the post voting system can benefit from this, in the sense that other smaller parties will be more detectable if included in more better known voting suggestion website/apps.

Think of it as similar to the difference between shopping mall store and internet app marketplaces. In shopping mall, only the one with the biggest amount of money will have the media clout to bludgeon most other smaller stores. But in an app store, you can discover smaller apps more easily, since your customer will find you, rather than you finding em.

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The module for this should really transmit this only over UART to the voting logic computer. Can't get any simpler than that in terms of attack vectors. (Please do not use PHP as your voting machine programming language, nor hook it up to an SQL database.).

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PROS: Opens up a whole new market of voting suggestion websites/apps that can more easily interface with voting machines.

CONS: Upgrades to voting machines required.
-- mofosyne, Nov 29 2014

AVANTE Ballot Marking Device http://www.avantete...ons/ballot-marking/
The first system to produce true "software independent" or "system independent" verification for visually impaired voters using PDF-417 2-D barcode [mofosyne, Nov 29 2014]

Oh btw my opinion is that voting machines should print on top of a paper ballot (In addition to electronic counting). Paper-less voting is a bad idea in general.

The ballot should have a barcode printed as well, that contains a copy of the information marked on the ballot.

The ballot reader will need to ensure that both the barcode and the marking matches.
-- mofosyne, Nov 29 2014


For autofilling via barcode, a barcode may look like the barcode for [link:AVANTE Ballot Marking Device]

This shows that while the barcode is not ultracompact and does take a sizable amount of space, it is not impractical as a method of storing autofilling suggestions via PDF-417 2-D barcode
-- mofosyne, Nov 29 2014



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