Report of the Marginal Marks Working Group

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Report of the Marginal Marks Working Group

• David Flater
• National Institute of Standards and Technology
• http//vote.nist.gov

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Charter

• Investigate the development of a standard
  reference set of ballot markings representative
  of the types of marks that voters make on each
  common type of optical scan / marksense ballot
• Goal Enable VSTLs and acceptance testers to
  test and document the responses of scanners
• Non-goal Define what is a valid vote

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Preliminary work

• Mascher, Mascher Jones, "Ballot Marks from the
  Humboldt County 2008 General Election DRAFT,"
  May 2010
• David Flater, informal review of ballots retained
  from previous human factors work at NIST
• Both data sources had active write-in campaigns
  (real or simulated)

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Coincidental findings

• Most frequent anomaly was misuse of write-in
  lines
• Wrote in name but did not fill the target
• "Emphasis write-ins"
• "Write In" interpreted as instruction to voter
• Redundancy similar to writing a check
• Corrections that won't work
• Most voters seem to think that the ballot is
  going to be read by a human
• Check marks, X's, bleed-through, smudges

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Examples
Cross-out correction Unmarked write-ins
Miscellaneous checks, X's, lines through targets
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Main objective

• "Development of Standard Reference Set of Ballot
  Markings," https//www.fbo.gov/, solicitation
  number SB1341-10-RQ-0458
• Data collection
• Hart ballots (square targets) from Clark County,
  WA
• ESS ballots (oval targets) from Spokane County,
  WA
• Sequoia ballots (arrows) from Snohomish County,
  WA
• Analysis and classification of marks
• Identification of test set of marks
• Design and validation of standard reference marks