Touchy results: In a study of the usability of touch-screen voting machines, such as the Diebold AccuVote-TS, pictured above, participants made errors in voting as much as 3 percent of the time on the simplest tasks, and 15 percent of the time on more complicated tasks, such as changing a selection they had previously made. Although the error rates are relatively small, the researchers point out that they would matter in elections as close as those in recent years.
Ben Bederson, Human-Computer Interaction Lab, University of Maryland
Experts say that when it comes to voting machines, usability issues should be as much of a concern as security.
Electronic voting systems--introduced en masse following high-profile problems with traditional voting systems in the state of Florida during the 2000 presidential election--were designed to quell fears about accuracy. Unfortunately, those concerns continue to permeate political conversation. The Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act of 2008, introduced recently by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ), proposes government funding for jurisdictions that use electronic voting to switch to systems that produce a paper trail. But many experts say that a paper trail alone can't solve the problem.
Ben Bederson, an associate professor at the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the University of Maryland, was part of a team that conducted a five-year study on voting-machine technology. Bederson says that machines should be evaluated for qualities beyond security, including usability, reliability, accessibility, and ease of maintenance. For example, in a 2006 Florida congressional election, some voters were uncertain whether touch-screen machines had properly recorded their votes, especially after 18,000 ballots in Sarasota County were marked "No vote" by the machines. "Security, while important, happens to be one of those places where voting machines actually have not proven to fail," Bederson says. "However, in many other ways, they have failed dramatically, especially [regarding] usability. The original Florida problem was primarily a usability issue." (Among the problems in Florida in 2000 was the case of Palm Beach County, where some voters were confused by a ballot design that listed candidates in two columns. The confounding layout led some people to mistakenly vote for Patrick Buchanan when they intended to vote for Al Gore.) Bederson's team, which included researchers from the University of Maryland, the University of Rochester, and the University of Michigan, particularly focused on usability, and they evaluated electronic voting systems built by Diebold, Election Systems and Software, Avante Voting Systems, Hart InterCivic, and Nedap Election Systems, as well as one prototype built by Bederson himself.
In the study, participants were told to vote for particular candidates in mock elections. The researchers then compared the results recorded on the machines with the voters' intentions. Bederson says that even for the simplest task--voting in one presidential race on a single screen--participants had an error rate of around 3 percent. When the task became more complicated, such as when voters were asked to change their selection from one candidate to another, the error rate increased to between 7 and 15 percent, depending on the system. Bederson notes that, although the error rate that occurred in the study may not necessarily mean that there is the same error rate in terms of actual votes on actual machines, the study does raise concern, considering how close some recent elections have been. Bederson's group recorded one test vote in which the errors caused different candidates to win a race depending on which machine was used. "As to whether errors are biased, the answer in general is that it depends on the specific usability problem," Bederson says.
Novel voting technology will be used in a local government election.
The 2008 presidential election could be shaken by flawed electronic voting technology.
The first principle is that ballots should be readable and writable by both people and machines. Voting machines that create ballots for people are acceptable, so long as the the result is readable by the voter. Making ballots directly writable by people (e.g. with a pen or stamp) ensures that voting does not stop in the event of machine failures (including power failures). The second principle is that these ballots must be tallied securely. The ballots should be read immediately at the polling place by a machine by a first manufacturer (and not the machine that printed the ballot, if any), and the result transmitted to the central tally site. Any error reading the ballot at this stage would allow the voter to recast her ballot (this would catch both voter mistakes and ballot readability issues). The ballot should then be physically transported to a secure repository and read by a machine by a second manufacturer. This tally should be compared to the first. The agreement of these tallies would certify the election. No modification of the tallying machines would be allowed after the ballot choices are specified. The third principle is that all equipment used in the process would have to be completely transparent (circuit diagrams and software listings publicly posted), and the testing and certification of the machines involved should be both performed and funded independently from the manufacturers of the machines.
All of these seem obvious, and yet I know of no place that even comes close.
Guys, you are all going down the wrong road here.
You are all worried about the technology.
Putting pictures of the inner working of the machines up on the wall is not going to make the 70 year old man feel more confident about using the new machine.
Look, all of the elections that have been stolen were done the old fashion way. People who were responsible for making sure the elections were fair, were bought off.
You all think that mechanical machines are safer. Not so, in the respect someone has to take the punched tickets and take them somewhere. That is where it usually goes wrong.
In Florida, with all the old people, they have been getting "confused" on how to use the machines for a long time.
"Hanging Chad" anyone?
How Does This Compare With Paper?
A critical question which seems to have been overlooked is how does the accuracy of the electronic machines compare to the accuracy of traditional paper ballots. I wouldn't expect either to be 100%.
Guest (carback1)
Re: How Does This Compare With Paper?
Due to the possibilities, electronic voting *can* be more accurate that paper, but right now it is unclear that this is the case.
The article does not indicate how systems stacked up against an optical scan ballot.
The menus on these machines may be confusing for some people, hence the 7-15% error rates, which are unacceptable.
The solution could be simple: make a website on which the voting software is simulated, so people can check it out days before the voting. Once they get in front of the real machine, everything is familiar.
I have a hard time seeing the 70 year old woman "practicing on the internet".
It is hard to do that when you do not own a computer…..
Sorry, but I just think the problem is not with the technology, but the idiots who are approving the screens.
The companies that make these things are just doing what is approved of.
Let’s not forget it was democrats who approved of the voting design on the mechanical machines that got all the old democrats voting for Pat Buchanan.....
More about the Emergency Assistance for Secure Elections Act
Rep. Holt's office notes that another important aspect of the proposed legislation is to provide funding for audits.
-- Erica Naone
Take a hint from the world's largest democracy
Why doesn't the U.S. govt. take a hint from India? We've been using EVMs (Electronic Voting Machines) for over ten years now. They are simple, cheap, durable and fool-proof. The EVMs do not have any complicated (and expensive) touch-screens.
They just have a number of buttons on the side which correspond to individual candidates. The voter gets to vote by pressing one of these buttons.
The fact that these EVMs have been successfully used in a country where the computer literacy is next to nothing is proof of their simplicity and durability.
The U.S. government should think simple.
Re: Take a hint from the world's largest democracy
And are these simple machines hacker/tamper proof? Probably not.
Re: Take a hint from the world's largest democracy
On what basis do you say that?
There are several fail-safe mechanisms. The microchip is imported from Japan and is sealed at the time of import. Any attempt to tamper with it will damage the chip rendering unusable.
The machine can only record only 5 votes a minute. This stops proxy voting and repetitive voting. The machine is provided with a control unit monitored at all times by an election officer. He/She decides when to allow a person to vote.
For further details please visit: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_voting_machines
Please note the cost of the machine. Rs 5000. Hardly 130 odd USD. This was the price in 1990. It has reduced significantly over the years.
The fact that the machine has been in use for over 17 years without any tampering incident is proof enough of its reliability.
Re: Take a hint from the world's largest democracy
P.S. Simple does not mean Stupid. I presume you're familiar with the saying KISS. (Keep It Simple Stupid) Well, this is a perfect example.
If voters get a receipt (paper or electronic) that shows how they voted, then votes can -- and will -- be sold.
People too out of it to vote properly should not be allowed to vote at all. Put some random obvious questions on the ballot, and if they are answered incorrectly, toss out the vote on the grounds of mental incompetence.
Examples:
Question: 2+2=?
Choices: a)4 b)379 c) dog
Question: What animal is smaller than a mouse?
Choices: a) oak tree b) 37 c) ant
Stop using X to indicate a vote
Why do they use X instead of a check mark? The electronic machines often have color screens, and sometimes the X is red. Huh?!? A red X to indicate that you are CHOOSING something? That is a stupid design. When you make a choice, the box should get a green check mark, and the choice should be underlined, changed to bold, and have the font size increased. Notwithstanding my previous comments about mentally incompetent voters, the design should make the choice obvious.
A RANDOM error, occurring only 10% of the time, in a voting population of several million, would have a miniscule chance of affecting the election outcome, even in a close election.
If the error is NONRANDOM, it might reflect poor design, or possibly even purposely confusing design, or it may simply reflect higher than average voter incompetence among a subset of voters.
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1 Comment
Can electornic voting ever be transparent?
The issues of trust in electronic voting is not just an issue of accuracy or usability. The main point is that the inner workings of the system will never be accessible to most of the population. This is a strong argument against ever using electronic voting.
http://jeannicod.ccsd.cnrs.fr/docs/00/22/19/85/PDF/0711TrustSecrecyReliabilityVotingSystems.pdf
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Guest (Jamescj1)
Re: Can electornic voting ever be transparent?
If electronic voting technology is ever to be TRUSTED, it must be made verifiably secure from “Insider” manipulation. Historically this has been the threat to elections; not individuals who make errors casting their ballots, Internet hackers or individuals falsifying their identity.
If electronic voting technology is to be used, paper ballots marked by the voter using either a ballot marking device or directly by the voter followed by mandatory audits are essential. Also essential and basic common sense is a comprehensive Independent Validation and Verification program for all hardware, firmware and software.
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Guest (carback1)
E-Voting Can Be More Secure
If done right, e-voting can be more secure than any system ever used before. Take a look at some of the emerging systems like Punchscan, Scantegrity, and Prêt à Voter. The key improvement of these systems is that the security is based on the protocol that they follow, and all the inputs and outputs to these systems are public, so anyone can check them to make sure they are legitimate. They also go one step further, giving assurance to each individual voter that his or her vote was actually counted, and this is something no other systems have achieved to date.
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