A Comparative Overview of Addmen Ballot Counting System

Addmen Ballot Counting System (ABCS) Combines the Advantages of

1. Manual Voting System,
2. Electronic Voting Machine (EVM),
3. Vote Counting Machine (VCM) and
4. Automated Election System (AES)

The physical Paper Ballot is used like manual system. Use of physical ballot paper is better than Electronic voting machine because if the EVM goes bad there is no connection or validation of the data within. So paper ballot is good for records and integrity as it is has faith of all kinds of participants and it is good for backup in case all automated counting process is to be bypassed due to any reason.

All ballot papers are scanned. Further their digital images are used in all further process. This avoids any chances of tampering or destroying the Ballot records. It also allows the possibility of automated vote counting like VCM and visual verification on multiple terminals like AES.

Ballots images are optically read and votes are counted and tallied. A parallel visual interface is available for process overseers who can interrupt and interrogate at will. There can be multiple such monitors/ video terminals where the extremely fast running process is displayed. The oversee can randomly press the pause button and manually validate the processing of the current sheet. The sheet data is recorded only if approved, or else the sheet is skipped and tagged for future evaluation. The advantage is that unlike AES, the user does not have to scan and view one sheet at a time and not need to count and approve each sheet in manual presence.

Maximum advantage of automated counting can be availed, and the process can be randomly paused for manual verification. The random verification can be done as many times as per comfort of the overseer.

Also no process specific hardware is required other than regular scanners and laptops used for OMR process and a few extended monitors with image splitter.

For optimal speed and effort, the ABCS offers several speed modes:

1) Auto Mode– The sheet processing runs at Computer Speed but allows the user to pause the fast moving processing for manual verification and approval.

2) Interval Mode – Allows automated processing with predefined speed and interval between images. The speed can be adjusted to few seconds per sheet enough for superficial manual scrutiny without actually pausing the process. This is the most time saving and effort saving and transparent mode. In case of any objectionable observation

3) Manual Mode – Allows one by one viewing, reading and parsing of each ballot image at human speed.
All the above modes are supplemented by Alert mode where the system will self pause and prompt if it finds some sheet with probable ambiguity.
4) Booster Mode- This mode is fully automated processing mode targeted to achieve maximum processing speed. It is like Auto Mode without possibility of manual pause and verification. The sheets identified with ambiguity are skipped and tagged by the system for future reading.

The steps of ABCS operation are enlisted below.

1. Collect all Ballot papers from Ballot Boxes and stack them properly or scanning
2. Scan the Ballot papers and repack and store the paper copy
3. Digital copy /Scanned image all placed in a folder to be used for reading by Addmen OMR software.
4. Select suitable settings in OMR reading Software Election module and process the folder.
5. In between the reading process a special interface is introduced which is visible on large size Television screens with multiple input controls given to each of the overseer.Image reading process is visible on overseer monitor. Each one of them has a mouse/Keyboard control with designated hotkeys.
6. Overseer can pause and process at will. Ballots can be approved or Skipped.
7. Once the reading process is complete, process can be repeated with focus on skipped ballots, if any.
8. As soon as the reading is complete, the counting process is finished within seconds and Election results can be printed.
9. The entire processes can be supplemented with screen recording softwares to record a video of the entire reading and processing activity.

REPORTS & OUTPUTS
Candidate wise Valid/Invalid Votes (Graphical)

REPORTS & OUTPUTS Election Voting Data (Excel)