[January 15, 2005] AVANTE Delivers Accessibility to Optical Voting System Tweet PRINCETON, N.J. --(Business Wire)-- Jan. 15, 2005 -- AVANTE is pleased to announce the allowance of US patent (Published patent application number 10/260167) on its auto-marking mark-sense paper voting system. AVANTE started election system accuracy and transparency improvement drives in 2000 with its pioneering innovation of voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) for electronic voting systems. This newly allowed patent on what is commonly called "auto-marking" of traditional paper ballot builds a bridge between the traditional "mark-sense" paper balloting system and the ability to provide voice-assistance and accessibility features to voters with visual or other disabilities. This accessible paper balloting system, OPTICAL VOTE-TRAKKER(TM), provides an alternative to the direct recording electronic systems (DRE) for jurisdictions nationwide in meeting the Help America Vote Act of 2002 accessibility requirements by 2006. This new technology complements the jurisdictions that use paper ballots for absentee voting. The "auto-marking" paper ballot system allows the voters to vote in the same way as the DRE touch-screen system. Instead of recording the voted electronic ballot directly in the memory, the system marks on a pre-printed ballot, or prints an optical scan ballot. The ovals of the selected candidates are completely filled in as the voter finishes his selections using touch-screen and/or audio balloting. The voters then examine the paper ballot for correctness before submitting for counting. Similar to DRE systems, ballots cannot be over-voted. Using the "skip contest" feature incorporated in all of the VOTE-TRAKKER(TM) solutions, all unintentional under-votes are also resolved to achieve the first 0% residual vote of any voting system. OPTICAL VOTE-TRAKKER(TM) also incorporates a randomly generated unique ballot identifier to authenticate every ballot. No duplicate ballots will be counted. This unique feature eliminates both unintentional human errors and intentional tampering. The randomly generated unique ballot-identifier also helps to authenticate ballots faxed in by overseas voters. ABOUT AVANTE AVANTE, located in Princeton, NJ, is an "up and comer" in the voting industry. AVANTE is leading the drive for voting system improvement with its pioneering use of voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) for electronic voting systems. AVANTE will license this and other patented technologies to the jurisdictions and other election solution providers in a united effort to improve the accuracy and transparency of the election processes of the nation. [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]