Vote by mail

A system gaining popularity in the western U.S. Oregon is switching to an all-mail system this year, and Washington state is gaining fast. (Maryland's governor has called for mass use of absentee ballots in this year's November elections due to rampant problems with the state's current DRE system, but that's not so much a vote-by-mail system as a vote-by-mail kludge.) Ballots are sent to a processing center where they're hand-counted or fed into an optical scanner.

Vote by phone

An unusual system offered by just one vendor, Louisville, Ky.-based IVS LLC. Don't whip our your mobile handset just yet; the system requires that voters be present in a polling place, from which the calls originate.

Voter access cards