scan are copied by election staff, and the copies are scanned. The scanning machines are faster than hand-counting for long ballots, so are typically used during the election and the night afterwards, to give quick results. There is less speed advantage in parliamentary systems where the member of parliament is the only contest on a ballot, so hand counting is fast and reliable. The paper ballots and electronic memories are stored, so election audits can check if the images and tallies are correct, and so investigations or court challenges can examine them. The advantage of scanning systems over direct-recording electronic voting machines is the availability of paper records for audits and investigations, and if electronic ballot markers are not required, voters do not need to wait for a machine during busy times. Hundreds of errors in optical scan systems have been found, from feeding ballots upside down, multiple ballots pulled through at once in central counts, paper jams, broken, blocked or overheated sensors which misinterpret some or many ballots, printing which does not align with the programming, programming errors, and loss of files. The cause of each programming error is rarely found, so it is not known how many were accidental or intentional. Besides scanner problems, paper ballots are subject to traditional risks, such as ballot box stuffing, ballot destruction and vote buying. These have traditional prevention measures. To address these issues, some have also suggested End-to-end auditable voting systems such as Scantegrity. Machine manufacturers In the United States: Premier Election Solutions (formerly Diebold Election Systems) Election Systems & Software (ES&S) Smartmatic Sequoia Voting Systems Hart InterCivic AVANTE International Technology, Inc. Unisyn Voting Solutions In Canada: Dominion Voting Systems In China: EKEMP INT'L LIMITED See also DRE voting machine Electronic voting Electronic voting#Paper-based electronic voting system Electronic voting in the United States#Optical scan counting Prêt à Voter Punchscan Scantegrity Vote counting#Optical scan counting Voting machine Voting machine#Optical scan (marksense) References Electronic voting methods Vote counting LOMO production