The hand-counted paper ballot was upgraded with the optical scan alternative. The optical scan allows voters to fill in a sheet by hand, but then it is tallied using a machine.
"The optical scan systems is where voters are filling in bubbles, much like they do when they take a standardized test. It gives people flashbacks probably to when they were in school," said Michael McDonald, of the University of Florida's Political Science department.
According to ProCon.org, over half of voters completed their ballot on an optical scanning machine in the 2012 election.
It is also a popular vote-counting option for states like Washington, Oregon and Colorado, which all have mail-in ballots.
There is little threat to using the optical scanning machines: "The threat is that marks on ballots can sometimes be inconclusive to a machine," McDonald said. However, this issue is usually solved a few days after the election when officials are verifying the results. "Usually that's just random errors and you don't usually see a big change in the numbers."