Ballot system and method adapted for optical scanning

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION The overall purpose of the balloting system in the political context is to quickly, inexpensively, and accurately allow the voting authority to determine the intent of the voter.
The optically scanned ballots are printed paper ballots with areas (usually ovals referred to as bubbles) in which the voter is to darken; the optical scanner simply looks at zones selected to encompass the marking areas on the ballot to determine if a sufficient mark has been made in any of these areas.
If so, that area is deemed marked, and a tallying program records the vote for that area.
Voters are notorious for failing to follow directions.
When voters circle the name on a ballot rather than marking the associated bubble, the scanning will detect no vote even though the voter intended to vote for the circled candidate.
In some cases, voters write notes, such as "wrong" next to a filled in bubble, to indicate that they did not want that vote counted.
These clear indications of intent are not tallied by the scanning system.
The ballot 2 shown in FIG.
2 is designed so that it will accept marks with an associated marking instrument only in the predefined areas (such as detection zones 21).
This feature will necessarily discourage voters from making extraneous marks since any attempt to write outside the zones 21 will show no mark.
In addition, because the application of the developer will produce a mark in the selected area, voters will be encouraged to fill in the marking area completely, thereby avoiding the improper mark 14 in FIG.
1.
The existing technology, known as invisible ink is disclosed in many patents, such as for example, the aforementioned U.
S.
Pat.
No.
4,514,177.
This invisible ink technology uses a first chemical placed on a writing surface and a marking pen, containing a second (developer) chemical which, when placed in contact with the first, creates a visible mark, but when placed on untreated paper, makes no visible mark.
Once created, the visible mark is essentially permanent