What are the major kinds of voting systems?
How is accuracy measured between different voting technologies?
How do different voting technologies affect specific population groups?
What does HAVA say about voting machines?
What are the advantages of electronic voting machines?
What are some concerns about electronic voting machines?
What is a 'voter-verified paper trail' and how can it improve the security of electronic voting machines?
What standards exist for voting systems?
How are voting systems tested and certified?
What testing procedures should states adopt to ensure maximum reliability?
Are voting machines distributed fairly?

What are the major kinds of voting systems?

• Lever Machines: No longer manufactured, today's lever machines are relics of the 19th century. These machines record votes mechanically when a voter pulls a lever next to each candidate's name. Vote tallies are then recorded mechanically on a counter wheel on each machine. (Around 14 percent of precincts used lever machines in 2004)
  
  
• Optical Scan: Voters indicate their choice by filling in a circle or completing an arrow that points to the candidate, as on a standardized test. Optical scanners then read the ballot and record the votes depending on the marks made. Two major categories of exist: central count, where ballots are transferred from the precinct and scanned at a central location, and precinct count, where the scanning machine is kept in the precinct. Precinct count systems can alert voters of overvotes before a ballot is cast, leading to a smaller number of spoiled ballots. (Around 36 percent of precincts used optical scan systems in 2004)
  
  
• Direct Response Electronic Voting Machines (DREs): DREs display candidate choices on a screen, allowing voters to select their choice by pressing a button or using a touch screen. Votes are recorded in each machine's memory, or on a disk of some kind. DREs also promise unlimited language options, audio voting for the visually impaired, and other accessibility options. See below for more on the pros and cons of DREs. (Around 25 percent of precincts used DREs in 2004)
  
  
• Punch cards: These infamous voting systems, used in much of Florida in 2000, require the voter to indicate their choice by making holes in a card. A machine then reads the card and records the vote according to where the holes have been punched. (Around 16 percent of precincts used a form of punch cards in 2004.)
  
  
• Hybrids between these systems are also in use in many places, for example, a DRE which prints a ballot which is then fed through an optical scanner.

Sources/More Information:

Voting Equipment in the 2004 Election
(Election Data Services) November 2, 2004

How is accuracy measured between different voting technologies?

The most popular method of measuring the accuracy of different voting systems is called the "residual vote rate," a comparison of the number of ballots cast with the number of votes actually counted for president (or other top ballot race). Comparisons are also made between counties that have changed voting equipment between elections. Note that residual vote rates are different than machine error rates, which don't take into account human errors in using a voting system. A voting machine may malfunction very rarely under optimal conditions, but may lead consistently to high numbers of spoiled ballots in actual election conditions.

Sources/More Information:

Residual Vote in the 2004 Election
Charles Stewart, III (CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project) February 2005

Summary Tables on Voting Technology and Residual Vote Rates
David Kimball (University of Missouri-St. Louis) June 28, 2005

Assessing Election Reform Four Years After Florida
David C. Kimball (University of Missouri-St. Louis) and Martha Kropf (University of Missouri-Kansas City) January 2005

How do different voting technologies affect specific population groups?

Studies have shown that areas which are low-income and have high minority populations are more likely to have higher numbers of uncounted (spoiled) ballots than affluent, white areas. The Harvard Civil Rights Project found that of "the 100 counties with the worst (highest) spoilage rates nationwide…67 of these have black populations above 12%. Of the top 100 counties with the best performance (lowest spoilage), the reverse is true-only 10 had sizeable black populations, while the population of 70 of the counties was over 75% white." Other research has traced this disparity to a higher incidence of punch card and other voting systems that do not alert voters when they have overvoted, resulting in more spoiled ballots.

Sources/More Information:

African Americans, Voting Machines, and Spoiled Ballots
Tova Andrea Wang (The Century Foundation) September 15, 2004

Who Uses Inferior Voting Technology?
Stephen Knack (University of Maryland) and Martha Kropf (University of Missouri, Kansas City) January 2001

What does HAVA say about voting machines?

By January 1, 2006, HAVA requires that all states have in place voting systems which:

• Permit voters to verify their selections on the ballot, notify them of overvotes (votes for more than one choice in a single race), and permit them to change their votes and correct any errors before casting the ballot. (This requirement does not mean that electronic systems which check for overvotes are mandatory. Jurisdictions using paper ballots, punchcards, or central-count voting systems instead may conduct voter education on how voters can prevent overvoting.)
  
  
• Produce a permanent paper record for the voting system that can be audited manually and is available as an official record for recounts. This is distinct from a voter-verified paper audit trail. (HAVA does not require that the voter see a paper copy of his or her vote).
  
  
• Provide to individuals with disabilities, including the blind and visually impaired, the same accessibility to voting as other voters. That can be accomplished through use of at least one DRE or other accessible voting system at each polling place.
  
  
• Provide alternative language accessibility as required by law.
  
  
• Comply with the error rate standards (the percentage of votes lost by the voting system) established by the Election Assistance Commission.

As part of the general funds available to states to comply with the law, HAVA set aside $325 million in one-time payments for states to replace their old punch card and lever machines by January 1, 2004, with an available extension to January 2006. States which accepted these funds were required to replace ALL of their punch card and lever machines.

Sources/More Information:

Fact Sheet: The Help America Vote Act of 2002, H.R. 3295
(National Association of Secretaries of States)

Help America Vote Act: Section 301

What are the advantages of electronic voting machines?

• Through features such as audio voting and hand-held voting devices for voters with limited physical dexterity, DREs can be made fully accessible to the disabled, including the visually impaired. For many disabled voters, that means being able to cast private, secret ballots for the first time.
  
  
• Computerized voting machines also have the capacity to provide ballots in an unlimited number of languages, benefiting language minorities.
  
  
• The flexibility and design possibilities of DREs promise greater user-friendliness, which can translate into a lower rate of ballots not counted due to error.
  
  
• Unlike with punch card and optical scan machines, DREs make it impossible to overvote inadvertently.
  
  
• Finally, a number of studies have shown that the votes of minorities are less likely to be counted when paper-based systems are used, and that these disparities are greatly reduced when electronic forms of voting are employed.

Understanding the Debate over Electronic Voting Machines
Tova Andrea Wang (The Century Foundation) May 26, 2004

What are some concerns about electronic voting machines?

• Fraud concerns: Computer scientists single out problems in the way source code is written as the biggest threat to voting security and accuracy. It is possible that whoever programs the software, or who gains access to the software through hacking, could tamper with it to alter the results. For example, the software could be made to drop or change votes, or change total vote counts, depending on the direction in which the tally is going.
  
  
• Transmission: Computer scientists also believe that DREs are vulnerable to interference during transmission of results. Although election results usually are not transmitted from precincts via the Internet, they may be transmitted via a direct modem connection. Some say that a hacker could intercept an encrypted call from a precinct to the receiving server and then call in fraudulent results.
  
  
• Recount: Most DRE machines do not provide an independent record of each individual ballot that can be used in a recount to check the machine for error or tampering. It is impossible to check if the voting machine records a vote in its memory different than the one the voter cast. When someone votes using a punch card ballot or an optical scan machine, those ballots are saved and can be counted if an election is called into question. The paper ballots can be compared to the machine vote. DRE machines do not provide that capability.

Sources/More Information:

Election Reform and Electronic Voting Systems (DREs): Analysis of Security Issues
Eric A. Fischer (Congressional Research Service) November 4, 2003

Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task Force Report
(California Secretary of State's Office) July 1, 2004

What is a 'voter-verified paper trail' and how can it improve the security of electronic voting machines?

A voter-verified paper trail is a paper copy of a voter's choices produced by a DRE. The paper ballot would appear under a glass screen attached to the electronic voting machine to be verified and then deposited in an internal box. Proponents argue that by having a contemporaneous, independently cast, physical paper ballot, a manual recount is possible if the election is challenged. In addition, voters can be sure that the vote they cast on the machine is the vote that is actually being recorded and tabulated. Numerous bills have been introduced in Congress and state legislatures that would require voting machines to produce a voter-verified paper-trail.

However, other experts and advocates are skeptical of the usefulness of paper trails. They have argued that printed ballots could still susceptible to fraud and will add prohibitive costs and difficulties to systems which promise important benefits to traditionally disenfranchised classes of voters.

Sources/More Information:

Voter-Verified Paper Record Legislation Page
(VerifiedVoting.org)

Voter-Verified Paper Audit Trail Legislation & Information
(Electionline.org)

Testimony on Voter Verification
Ted Selker (CalTech/MIT Voting Technology Project) June 2005

What standards exist for voting systems?

Voluntary federal guidelines are now produced by the Election Assistance Commission, the body set up to oversee implementation of HAVA. Once adopted, voting systems will need to meet these standards in order to achieve certification from national accredited testing labs. Restricting machine choices to those which have received national certification provides states with an easy way to distinguish which systems are compliant with HAVA. However, final national standards will not be published until fall 2005, just months before the January 2006 deadline for complying with HAVA. That window may not provide enough time for state officials, machine vendors, testing labs and others to fully adopt and apply the new standards.

In addition, many states have also developed their own standards for voting systems which may reflect specific requirements not included in the federal guidelines, or mandate lower error standards.

According to Electionline.org, thirty-five states required voting systems to meet state and federal standards; nine relied entirely on federal standards; five used state standards; and Mississippi and Oklahoma had no voting system standards. The nine states that did not have their own standards were Alaska, Delaware, the District of Columbia, Georgia, Hawaii, Oregon, Rhode Island, Utah, and West Virginia.

Sources/More Information:

Proposed Voluntary Voting System Guidelines
(Election Assistance Commission)

2002 Voting Systems Standards
(Federal Election Commission)

Gap Analysis Between 2002 Voting System Standards and the Requirements of HAVA Section 301(a)
(Election Assistance Commission) July 20, 2005 - Discusses differences between the last set of voting system standards and HAVA's requirements.

Securing the Vote
(Electionline.org) April 2004

How are voting systems tested and certified?

Testing and certification of voting systems occurs at four different levels:

• Vendor testing: Voting system manufacturers incorporate federal and state standards and laws into their design and testing process, in order to ensure their products will comply with the standards states have set.
  
  
• Qualification testing: For the past several years, qualification testing at the federal level has been conducted by the National Association of State Election Directors and contracted Independent Testing Authorities. This task will now be the responsibility of the United States Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in conjunction with the National Institute of Science and Technology.
  
  
• State certification: State personnel or contractors perform testing under the direction of the state to ensure the voting system complies with all of the state's requirements.
  
  
• Local acceptance testing: Individual jurisdictions perform testing before each election

• ensure that voting systems meet any additional state requirements;
  
  
• set up and supervise local testing procedures to make sure systems perform properly once they actually arrive in a jurisdiction;
  
  
• perform periodic testing of machines;
  
  
• test any new modifications; and
  
  
• keep copies of source code, software, and design plans.

Other important steps states can take to ensure the security and accuracy of their voting systems include:

• Parallel testing: States can arrange secure mock elections with a random sample of voting machines to determine whether machines are functioning properly and identify possible security breaches.
  
  
• Training: Poll workers and other elections staff must be properly trained on how to operate new voting systems, and what to do in case of an election day crisis.
  
  
• Independent Oversight Board: States should appoint an independent board comprised of elections experts, officials, and representatives of election monitoring groups to oversee the process.

For more recommendations regarding machine testing and certification, see below.

Sources/More Information:

Balancing Access and Integrity: Chapter 5
Working Group on State Implementation of Election Reform (The Century Foundation) July 2005

Recommendations for Improving Reliability of Direct Recording Electronic Voting
(Brennan Center for Justice, Leadership Conference on Civil Rights)

Are voting machines distributed fairly?

Long waits at polling places in 2004 revealed a disturbing vulnerability in our election system: in periods of high turnout, inadequate numbers of voting machines can lead to large scale disenfranchisement. While many voters braved the lines and waited up to ten hours to vote, we can't know how many voters were forced to leave the line. Regardless, excessive waits to vote impose an unfair burden on working people tantamount to disenfranchisement. Even more disturbing are reports that in heavily contested Ohio, the number of machines-per-registered voter were far lower in urban, minority counties than in white suburban counties, largely due to a redistribution of machines from city precincts to the suburbs.

Sources/More Information:

More Trials and Tribulations for Ohio
Tova Andrea Wang (The Century Foundation) December 30, 2004