Survey of election reporting formats

This is a work in progress for uscountvotes.org. So far only a few states have been looked over thoroughly and a few other links pulled in from stuff on hand from other work.

Major voting technologies

Though it is unclear whether each of these formats come from the core equipment (punchcard readers, optical scanners, e-vote stations, central tabulators, etc), or an election management system (e.g. GEMS) sold by the same manufacturer, or a system sold by a value-added reseller, the following formats seems to be associated with certain base equipment vendors. Also carefully note the terms in bold italics. These are jargon terms which, if used when requesting data, may speed things up.

Another piece of advice for those requesting data: it is always preferable to get the data in electronic form, and you should say so first thing when requesting that data from a BOE -- sometimes when they seem to be stalling you, they are just thinking you want them to print out many pages of information, and fax or mail it to you. It is often easier for them to email the information or mail you a floppy, and saying you'd prefer an electronic format can actually increase responsiveness. ASCII is always preferable, but barring that, PDF, spreadsheet files, or even HTML is workable. Failing that a scan of a hardcopy of the report is better than nothing, and at last resort, a fax of the hardcopy -- but faxes will usually require manual entry due to low resolution. If you do receive it as a fax, try to receive it with a fax modem, rather than a paper fax machine -- the less times it goes through the wringer before being digitized, the better the chance we can OCR it.

Deibold opscans generate these types of reports:
ES&S systems have many variations depending on the underlying technology:
NTS -- a data services and software company, not a machine vendor, has their own format.
Microvote:
Sequoia -- still trying to nail down this vendor's formats.
I have only one sample from a Shoup/AVS Lever machine county so far:
BCCS punchcard systems
Hart Intercivic eSlate:
Votomatic

State hosting systems

Some enterprising "public minded" dotcommers started systems to try to get all counties in their state to buy in to web services for their BOEs. Unfortunately these systems tend not to do precinct level data, which is a bad thing when a county opts to use them as their reporting venue. Note in some cases, counties report both via one of these services, and also on their own websites.

FL
http://www.electionsonthe.net/fl/ is a dead link, but is present on the website.
IN
http://www.electionsonthe.net/in/ is a dead link, but is present on the website.
IL
Many counties are served/hosted by their vote equipment provider, Fidlar.
http://www.fidlar.com/results/us/ which also handles a few in IA and NC.
MA
Not a state "system", per se, but it should be noted that in Massachussets, where elections are run at the town, rather than county, level, of 351 towns, 129 of them have only one precinct, and as such would only need to be consulted individually for absentee breakdowns.
MS
I don't think there is much we can do to automate Mississippi's handwritten "recapitulation" sheets:
http://www.sos.state.ms.us/elections/2004/General/index.asp
OH
http://electionohio.com/boe.asp serving 10 counties, no precinct data http://www.electionsonthe.net/oh/ serving 10 counties, precinct data depends on BOE.
PA
http://www.electionsonthe.net/pa/ serving 1 county, precinct data depends on BOE. (I mean really depends on them. Look how this guy did it, for laughs: http://www.datekcc.com/elections/Cambria/Nov2004/PrecSel.htm )
SC
http://www.electionsonthe.net/sc/ is a dead link, but is present on the website.
TN
http://www.electionsonthe.net/tn/ lists county contacts or webpages, but they do not seem to actually serve any counties there.
http://www.votetn.com/ serves six counties, and provides precint level information.
VA
This one is actually good, and pervasive.
http://sbe.vipnet.org/ VA "live" elections results by-precinct.
http://www.sbe.state.va.us/Election/results/ VA "archives," including by-precinct (Note we may still need to hit some BOEs directly for audit purposes and they may have the precinct-level data earlier.)
WA
http://votewashington.org serving 9 counties no precinct level data