Optical Scan Central Count - The current Travis County voting system utilizes 12 optical scan machines, AIS Central Scanner Model 315. 550 Vote Tabulators, which are the same type system, but count ballots faster and can be networked so that time is saved in transferring ballot counts from the machines to a computer for accumulation and report printing. Because the PBC counts the ballots as they are submitted, at the end of the day, the election judge need only complete the paperwork and modem the precinct's results directly to a central computer for accumulation and report printing. The hand audit to verify write-ins would occur after the results are transferred to the central computer. For example, primary elections would have to utilize two PBCs per precinct, which was not financially feasible.
Current technology allows PBCs to handle more than one election at a time.
In 1997, the Texas Legislature passed a law allowing modem transfer of election results. Prior to that time, election judges would still have had to drive the results diskette into a central counting station or a receiving substation. At the time the 1990 task force investigated the issue, the PBCs would have cost more than the central counting optical scan system, while saving little time. Some DREs are a touch-screen voting system. Anyone who has used a touch-screen ATM machine or a wedding registry at a department store is familiar with this technology.