Re: Bar Code Scheme for Ballot

On Thursday 21 August 2003 04:49 pm, Arthur Keller wrote:
> At 4:38 PM -0700 8/21/03, Alan Dechert wrote:
> >Probably, we will be encoding 7 bits with a single character.
> > In this case, the possibilities for the first 7 bits are:
> >
> >1000000
> >0100000
> >0010000
> >0001000
> >0000100
> >0000010
> >0000001
> >0000000
>
> That encodes eight possibilities. That can more effectively
> be encoded in 3 bits. 7 bits can encode 128 possibilities.
> If you use a bit-dense continuous coding scheme with varying
> length codes, it wouldn't be easy to figure out anything by
> eye, but easy by computer.
>
> Arthur

Exactly. You could use Huffman encoding based on the party
percentages from the previous election, and put the codes into
packed binary arrays.

If we had to, we could encrypt the data. So the question of
reading the bar codes by eye is a non-issue.

-- 
Edward Cherlin, Simputer Evangelist
Encore Technologies (S) Pte. Ltd.
Computers for all of us
http://www.simputerland.com, http://cherlin.blogspot.com
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