Pen and Paper: A new thin client, "Digital Pen Voting"
Got a call from a fellow IT guy, friend, and some time collaborator advising me he has something to give me. It is the manual for WEB 3.0 OS from 1992. WEB 3.0 sat atop MS DOS 3.X turning the connected devices into a Peer-to-Peer network, with E-mail. We installed a 20 node network for a NFP group in 1990 or 1991. New Samsung 386s with large 40 Meg hard drives. What could we put into those 8 Meg D: drives?
Of course everyone remembers what happened. Microsoft acquired the technology and it became Windows For Workgroups. One of the graphics that the developer (Josh) put into the WEB 3.0 OS still remains on the login screen of Server 2003. Probably does not do the exactly the same it did 17 years ago and the colors have changed, but the graphic is still there.
Chris has something else to show me. Paper. “Yes, it is a pad of paper.”
He insists I look more closely. “It has dots!” Ok, it has dots. “ I bought 10 pads for a dollar each at the close out store.” With all those dots, even thought you can barley see them, maybe 50 cents would have been a better price.
He then pulls out a pen. “You write on the paper.”
“But of course, that is what you normally do.”
“Exactly!” he proclaims.
“Let me show you. I want to send you an email. I write in this area your email address. Then I write in the subject line the subject. Now I can write anything on this piece of paper that I want to. Then check this box. And then this email is sent to you.”
Huh?
“THE PEN is a camera!”
Huh?
“THE PEN knows about the dots on the paper and records what you have written and stores that information in the 1 Meg of on board memory. Since it does not need to store what is printed on the form, it can store up to 40-50 written pages at a time. It then sends the stored data to a router, PC or a cell phone, and then that stored information is directed to the server-hosted application that processes the transmitted data as if you had entered it from a console. The paper form is the monitor and the pen is a combination keyboard and mouse.”
“Server Hosted Application?”
“Yes. Much of this is like your Server Based Computing.”
“The paper has a form printed over the top of the dot pattern and the digital pen can see the pattern of dots through the form but the pen or camera or what ever you want to call it, does not see what we humans can see and that is the printed form over the dots. The pen knows about the dots and where it is on the page. The pen has no need to know what we humans need to see. It is somewhat like your Server Based Computing when you separate the application execution from the presentation and then sends keystrokes, and mouse movements.”
“Is it not also like a data base form in that the form guides us on how to enter information but the database cares only about what information you entered and where it will store what you have entered?”
“I think you starting to grasp the idea.”
We are in sports bar that appears to have been a TV store that skipped the closeout sale before becoming a bar. No need for a theme just fill the wall space up with more and bigger screens. And servers that know how to sell…beer. She takes our order.
“Chris, these dots, are they like a Global Position Satellite system for paper?”
“If that would help your visualize what is going on then think of it in that way. But no. Although the barely visible dots appear to be uniform they are just the opposite. Each collection of dots is unique. The owners of this process have used a real estate metaphor to define where these dots are with respect to that one page and all the other unique pages in the world.”
“Like the county maps down at the courthouse that defines where the property is located, who owns the property, and the tax rate? How much does this stuff cost?”
“Hold the cost thought for later, And yes it much like the county recorders office, except larger.”
“How much larger?”
“Imagine starting out at the county court house and we started laying down a unique page of paper side by side and up and down. No two pages would be the same. We keep doing this until we ran out of discreet pages. How much of an area do think we could cover?”
“Ten square blocks?”
“Try again.”
“One hundred?”
“No.”
“How large?”
“About an area the size of Europe and Asia combined!”
“That’s big.”
The food arrives. I need some time to think about what Chris is trying to show me.
Here is an input device that transmits collected data from a unique form that is not replicated anywhere else in the world. “Chris do the pages in your pad have the same dot pattern for each page?”
“Yes, but remember that this form is the only form that can have this dot pattern.”
This process takes information that a human places on a printed form and transmits only that data that the application needs to start the downstream process. The fact that the page is unique means the pen can send collected data over a network knowing that on the backside an application will know about this page’s information and where and how it is to manage the data. Ok.
Then I start to think, does this process require special paper? Does it require a special printer? What about the ink, the toner, print on color paper? If the dots are black can I use black for my form or does it have to be a color other than black? Do I have to buy the paper from a proprietary source? I ask.
“Chris, does this process require a special printer or other supplies that must be purchased from the vendor?”
“No. If using a laser printer it recommended that you use a 600 or 1200 DPI color laser printer using white paper that has enough opacity for the pen not to misread dots that are printed on the back side of the paper.”
“Can you use a monochrome printer?”
“It is possible but not recommended for most applications. It is best to use carbon based black toner with high pigment content. This allows for high absorption in the IF band 800-950 nm. Use Cyan, Magenta and Yellow toner to create the text and graphics that we humans need to see. The pen sees the black dots and we see the human interface.”
“You now have an pen and paper process that can fill out forms and have that information processed directly into a back end application. Do you have an application in mind?”
“Replace many DRE and all the optical scan voting machines. I named it 'Digital Paper Voting'.”
I am taken back. I would have expected something like filing out insurance claim forms or renew form at the bureau of motor vehicles for my automobile license. He wants to replace many DRE and optical scan voting machines in the US.
“Chris, boards of elections all over the US have spent millions, or is it billions, of dollars updating to these high tech machines. Why would you think that they would change them out for a pen and paper system?”
“The DRE machines were supposed to be the better technology answer to punch cards and pull down lever machines. Then legislation added that there should be a paper audit trail. The original purpose of the DRE was to directly record electronically the vote. The results go directly in to a data cartridge and it is transported directly back to the board. No paper. Many of these boards are going to have to update the DRE equipment to conform to the new legislation requiring a paper audit trail.
Optical scan requires heavy card stock. It is sensitive to humidity and requires special handling. Digital Paper is very low cost compared to the OpScan paper. You can print ballots internally at your own office (read: Ballot on Demand). There is no need for an expensive precinct optical scanner.
More on the plus side of the equation for digital paper, the voter is provided with a natural and familiar interface--ink on a page! The paper ballot is retained for hand counting in re-counts and for other audits. Each voting station contains a pen and cradle; so votes are "recorded" in the 'booth'. You can use your old punch card booths--no need for expensive DREs (except the disabled voters).
Digital paper and pen can be used in early voting states, or in-house absentee voting. And it allows easy integration with vendors who already have ballot creation software/end of night tabulation systems and election night website output.”
I look at the WEB 3.0 Network Operating System manual dated April 1, 1992. “Could this be as significant as the WEB?”
“Maybe. The difference is that WEB was for network guys that wanted a simpler alternative to Novell. Digital paper is for everyone.”
For more information about digital pen and paper, visit www.votingindustry.com. Or you can view a Digital Pen Voting system demonstration on YouTube.
Until the next post,
Steve
Of course everyone remembers what happened. Microsoft acquired the technology and it became Windows For Workgroups. One of the graphics that the developer (Josh) put into the WEB 3.0 OS still remains on the login screen of Server 2003. Probably does not do the exactly the same it did 17 years ago and the colors have changed, but the graphic is still there.
Chris has something else to show me. Paper. “Yes, it is a pad of paper.”
He insists I look more closely. “It has dots!” Ok, it has dots. “ I bought 10 pads for a dollar each at the close out store.” With all those dots, even thought you can barley see them, maybe 50 cents would have been a better price.
He then pulls out a pen. “You write on the paper.”
“But of course, that is what you normally do.”
“Exactly!” he proclaims.
“Let me show you. I want to send you an email. I write in this area your email address. Then I write in the subject line the subject. Now I can write anything on this piece of paper that I want to. Then check this box. And then this email is sent to you.”
Huh?
“THE PEN is a camera!”
Huh?
“THE PEN knows about the dots on the paper and records what you have written and stores that information in the 1 Meg of on board memory. Since it does not need to store what is printed on the form, it can store up to 40-50 written pages at a time. It then sends the stored data to a router, PC or a cell phone, and then that stored information is directed to the server-hosted application that processes the transmitted data as if you had entered it from a console. The paper form is the monitor and the pen is a combination keyboard and mouse.”
“Server Hosted Application?”
“Yes. Much of this is like your Server Based Computing.”
“The paper has a form printed over the top of the dot pattern and the digital pen can see the pattern of dots through the form but the pen or camera or what ever you want to call it, does not see what we humans can see and that is the printed form over the dots. The pen knows about the dots and where it is on the page. The pen has no need to know what we humans need to see. It is somewhat like your Server Based Computing when you separate the application execution from the presentation and then sends keystrokes, and mouse movements.”
“Is it not also like a data base form in that the form guides us on how to enter information but the database cares only about what information you entered and where it will store what you have entered?”
“I think you starting to grasp the idea.”
We are in sports bar that appears to have been a TV store that skipped the closeout sale before becoming a bar. No need for a theme just fill the wall space up with more and bigger screens. And servers that know how to sell…beer. She takes our order.
“Chris, these dots, are they like a Global Position Satellite system for paper?”
“If that would help your visualize what is going on then think of it in that way. But no. Although the barely visible dots appear to be uniform they are just the opposite. Each collection of dots is unique. The owners of this process have used a real estate metaphor to define where these dots are with respect to that one page and all the other unique pages in the world.”
“Like the county maps down at the courthouse that defines where the property is located, who owns the property, and the tax rate? How much does this stuff cost?”
“Hold the cost thought for later, And yes it much like the county recorders office, except larger.”
“How much larger?”
“Imagine starting out at the county court house and we started laying down a unique page of paper side by side and up and down. No two pages would be the same. We keep doing this until we ran out of discreet pages. How much of an area do think we could cover?”
“Ten square blocks?”
“Try again.”
“One hundred?”
“No.”
“How large?”
“About an area the size of Europe and Asia combined!”
“That’s big.”
The food arrives. I need some time to think about what Chris is trying to show me.
Here is an input device that transmits collected data from a unique form that is not replicated anywhere else in the world. “Chris do the pages in your pad have the same dot pattern for each page?”
“Yes, but remember that this form is the only form that can have this dot pattern.”
This process takes information that a human places on a printed form and transmits only that data that the application needs to start the downstream process. The fact that the page is unique means the pen can send collected data over a network knowing that on the backside an application will know about this page’s information and where and how it is to manage the data. Ok.
Then I start to think, does this process require special paper? Does it require a special printer? What about the ink, the toner, print on color paper? If the dots are black can I use black for my form or does it have to be a color other than black? Do I have to buy the paper from a proprietary source? I ask.
“Chris, does this process require a special printer or other supplies that must be purchased from the vendor?”
“No. If using a laser printer it recommended that you use a 600 or 1200 DPI color laser printer using white paper that has enough opacity for the pen not to misread dots that are printed on the back side of the paper.”
“Can you use a monochrome printer?”
“It is possible but not recommended for most applications. It is best to use carbon based black toner with high pigment content. This allows for high absorption in the IF band 800-950 nm. Use Cyan, Magenta and Yellow toner to create the text and graphics that we humans need to see. The pen sees the black dots and we see the human interface.”
“You now have an pen and paper process that can fill out forms and have that information processed directly into a back end application. Do you have an application in mind?”
“Replace many DRE and all the optical scan voting machines. I named it 'Digital Paper Voting'.”
I am taken back. I would have expected something like filing out insurance claim forms or renew form at the bureau of motor vehicles for my automobile license. He wants to replace many DRE and optical scan voting machines in the US.
“Chris, boards of elections all over the US have spent millions, or is it billions, of dollars updating to these high tech machines. Why would you think that they would change them out for a pen and paper system?”
“The DRE machines were supposed to be the better technology answer to punch cards and pull down lever machines. Then legislation added that there should be a paper audit trail. The original purpose of the DRE was to directly record electronically the vote. The results go directly in to a data cartridge and it is transported directly back to the board. No paper. Many of these boards are going to have to update the DRE equipment to conform to the new legislation requiring a paper audit trail.
Optical scan requires heavy card stock. It is sensitive to humidity and requires special handling. Digital Paper is very low cost compared to the OpScan paper. You can print ballots internally at your own office (read: Ballot on Demand). There is no need for an expensive precinct optical scanner.
More on the plus side of the equation for digital paper, the voter is provided with a natural and familiar interface--ink on a page! The paper ballot is retained for hand counting in re-counts and for other audits. Each voting station contains a pen and cradle; so votes are "recorded" in the 'booth'. You can use your old punch card booths--no need for expensive DREs (except the disabled voters).
Digital paper and pen can be used in early voting states, or in-house absentee voting. And it allows easy integration with vendors who already have ballot creation software/end of night tabulation systems and election night website output.”
I look at the WEB 3.0 Network Operating System manual dated April 1, 1992. “Could this be as significant as the WEB?”
“Maybe. The difference is that WEB was for network guys that wanted a simpler alternative to Novell. Digital paper is for everyone.”
For more information about digital pen and paper, visit www.votingindustry.com. Or you can view a Digital Pen Voting system demonstration on YouTube.
Until the next post,
Steve
