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The following information may be useful in determining future
course of action for central count. The following test was run.
I tried five Lucid readers without shimming (.007 width of
ballot paper) using 50% ballots that had been "smoothed" and 50% not
smoothed. Smoothing means that someone takes a smooth blunt object and
presses the crease made by the fold. I then shimmed 5 units. This is
what I noticed:
- A significant improvement when shimmed, I assume allowing for
the timing and the fold dragging on the way thru the machine, affecting how
the machine tracks the timing marks thru the machine.
- The shimmed units were somewhat variable. That is one
machine of the five had consistently higher number of "no ender marks",
"calibration errors" etc. with or without smoothing.
- The "smoothing" process greatly affects the ballots going
thru the units smoothly. The folks in Santa Barbara have accepted this
process and seem ok with it. The "low staffing" sites, such as Humboldt,
bristle at the thought of having to manually smooth out the fold on each
ballot. But they may not have a choice.
Conclusion: Variability in Lucid readers can be
significant. Folds are a definite contributing factor to thruput.
Shimming for thickness of folds helps in central
count.
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