Batch-fed scanner

An electronic voting device that:

accepts stacks of hand-marked or Ballot Marking Device (BMD)-produced paper ballots and automatically processes them until the stack is empty;

is usually used at an election jurisdiction’s central location;

is mostly commonly used to process absentee ballots;

usually has input and output hoppers for ballots; scans a ballot and rejects it if either unreadable or un-processable;

detects, interprets, and validates contest selections;

detects and sorts (either digitally or physically) ballots that are unreadable or un-processable, or that contain undeterminable selections, marking exceptions, or write-ins;

and tabulates and reports contest results as required.

This unit was previously referred to as central count optical scanner or CCOS.

Source: Election Terminology Glossary - Draft, National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), https://pages.nist.gov/ElectionGlossary/