The Problem with Voting Technology and Its Effect on Society

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The Problem with Voting Technology and Its Effect
on Society
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Three required characteristics of a voting system

• Accuracy
• Scalability
• Speed

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Accuracy

• Goal of voting is to establish intent of each
  voter and let that translate into a final tally
• Security is a part of this. It should be
  impossible to alter or destroy someones vote!

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Scalability

• Capacity is the key
• Voting systems need to be able to handle very
  large elections
• One eligible voter in the U.S is potentially
  faced with dozens of elections (state, local,
  nationwide)
• 100 million people in America vote for president

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Speed

• Voting systems should produce results quickly!
• People expect to learn the results of an election
  before bedtime
• It took several days to learn who the new
  president was in the 2000 elections

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5 Different types of voting equipment

• Hand counted paper
• Mechanical lever machine
• Punch card ballots
• Optically scanned paper
• Electronic voting machine

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Hand counted paper

• When votes are manually counted by groups of
  individuals
• Not practical for United States elections system
• Hand counted method had the lowest rates of
  unmarked, uncounted, and spoiled balls in
  presidential, Senate, and governor elections over
  the last 12 years.

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Mechanical lever machine

• Name of candidate is assigned a particular lever
• Voter pulls down selected levers to indicate
  choices
• Lever machines have the highest rate of unmarked,
  uncounted, and spoiled ballots in Senate and
  governor elections over the last 12 years

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Punch card ballots

• Candidates names will match up with little boxes
  printed on the punch card
• When you want to vote, you take a little metal
  tool and punch out the square next to the name
• Punch cards have the highest rate of unmarked,
  uncounted, and spoiled ballots over the last 4
  presidential elections

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Optically scanned paper

• Voter fills ovals on piece of paper, then fed
  into an optical-scan reader
• Reader senses filled-in ovals and tabulates votes
• Optically scanned paper had lowest rates of
  unmarked, uncounted, and spoiled ballots in
  presidential, Senate and governor elections over
  last 12 years

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Direct-recording electronic system (DRE)

• Voter is presented with list of choices on screen
• Voter makes choice by simply touching the screen
• Produces tabulation of voting data stored in a
  removable memory component and printed copy

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DREs benefits ?

• Easy to operate
• Can produce final tallies immediately after polls
• Can manage very complex elections
• Displays voting instructions in different
  languages
• Allows blind and handicapped to vote without help
  from other individuals

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Problems with DREs ?

• Bugs in software
• Possibility of system getting hacked
• Electronic machines have the second highest rate
  of unmarked, uncounted, and spoiled ballots in
  presidential, Senate and governor elections over
  the last 12 years

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SEE FOR YOURSELF!!

• http//www.youtube.com/watch?vEopnvw7mh_8

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Cases across the country

• In 2003, Virginia, programming error in DRE
  caused them to mysteriously subtract 100 votes
  from one candidates totals
• In 2000, Florida, DRE gave Gore final vote count
  of negative 16,022 votes
• In 2003, Indiana, DRE showed more than 140,000
  votes cast when the county only has 50,000
  residents (less than half were eligible to vote)

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Public raises questions about voting

• Can DREs be trusted?
• Are newer forms of voting technology fair and
  accommodating to ALL members of society?

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Survey information

• Despite problems with DREs American public
  generally still supports it

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Survey information contd

• People age 65 had the lowest approval rating
  for DREs

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Survey information contd

• Members of every racial group have overall
  positive trust levels of the new voting
  technology
• The Black community had slightly less trust than
  the rest of the groups

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Fairness of system

• Non-partisan groups such as NAACP and People for
  the American Way worried that less educated
  individuals would be intimidated by complexity of
  new technologies
• Some argue that internet voting can never be
  ratified because it discriminates against poorer
  individuals who dont own computers or have
  internet access

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Possible solutions

• Some suggest new standards be developed that
  focus on appropriate standards for security,
  human usability, and handicap accessibility
• More government funding for research
• Others say DREs and optical scanning should
  completely replace all other forms of voting
  technology (this would cost 200 million a year)

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THE END p.s. Dont forget to vote