A punched card or punch card is a piece of stiff paper that can be used to contain digital information represented by the presence or absence of holes in predefined positions. The information might be data for data processing applications or, in earlier examples, used to directly control automated machinery. The terms IBM card, or Hollerith card specifically refer to punched cards used in semiautomatic data processing. While punched cards are now obsolete as a recording medium, as of 2012, some voting machines still use punched cards to record votes.