Tuesday, July 8, 2008

Ballot Browsing program

Here's a screen shot of a ballot browsing program I'm developing for the project. A download should be available soon.

The program is built in Python and uses Tkinter, Pysqlite and the Python Imaging Library (PIL); everything is free and open source, and can run on Windows or Linux.

In addition to showing the ballots, this program can count votes for a precinct, and show how it decided which voting ovals were marked, showing the user the oval in question.

In this screenshot, the program has overlaid the selected ballot with rectangles showing which areas the program is counting, and which candidates get votes when the ovals in those rectangles are filled in. Under the menubar, the program has listed the winners on this particular ballot.

The program can use ballots installed on an individual's computer from the project's DVDs, or can go out and retrieve individual ballots over the internet.