Convened by the American Association for the
Advancement of Science
Main | Participants
In 2002, with the federal enactment of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA),
Congress for the first time created a role for the federal government
in the administration of local election when federal offices are on the
ballot. Many changes made by HAVA will impact all elections not just those
that are federal. The law among other things created a new federal government
agency to provide guidance to states, and made obsolete punch card and
lever voting machines by mandating disability and language minority access
requirements.
The result of the HAVA has been a historic shift from lever, paper, and
punch card voting systems to Optical Scan and direct recording electronic
(DRE) systems. The numbers of voters who lived in counties served by different
types of voting systems have seen a dramatic change in their voting experience.
According to Election Data Services, a for profit political consulting
firm specializing in redistricting, election administration, and the analysis
and presentation of census and political data with geographic information
system the transformation from punch card, lever, and paper systems is
nearly complete. The numbers of registered voters who live in counties
using Optical Scan voting systems has increased from 46.7 million or 29.5%
to 84.0 million or 48.9%. While those registered voters living in counties
served by direct recording electronic (DRE) voting systems have increased
from 19.7 million or 12.4% to 65.9 million or 38.4% within 2 federal election
cycles.
Technology that facilitates the right of citizens to participate in public
elections may threaten privacy, especially when it is associated with
the administration of elections and, under certain conditions, the very
act of voting. The use of technology in the online and offline voting
process is growing in popularity around the world. The Charter of Fundamental
Rights of the European Union and the United Nations Universal Declaration
of Human Rights' support the right of citizens to both privacy and self-governance.
Democracies are universally defined as the most efficient means of supporting
self-governance through citizen participation in the form of voting. The
secret ballot has long been considered an integral requirement of democratic
governance.
The balance between a state’s right to ensure that intimidation and election
fraud are not present in public elections, and the voter’s right to privacy
has resulted in the development of the secret ballot and restricted zones
around voting compartments. Because of the documented history of voter
intimidation, coercion, and fraud associated with third-party knowledge
of how individual voters cast their ballots, it is important not to underestimate
the importance of voter privacy.
Transparency is also an important value in the administration of public
elections. It is not good enough to assure voters, media, and contestants
in public elections that the process was fair. Transparency is a challenge
in an environment where fully electronic voting systems are employed.
Electronic voting systems are not new to the public election process they
have been used for ballot tabulation for decades. The occasional loss
of physical ballots due to the use of electronic vote tabulation systems
was also a well-documented problem. However, what is new is the adoption
of voting systems that record and tabulate votes on a single device.
In this environment transparency is a serious challenge for election administrators
to overcome. Manufacturers of voting systems claim proprietary rights
that block public scrutiny of their products. The added twist to the new
electronic voting landscape are the consequences of the occasional lost
of ballots or voter selections. Instead of these incidents remaining
hidden from public knowledge they are more readily made known by media
reports. In addition, the demands for greater transparency post-2000 are
placing election administrators and elections under unprecedented scrutiny.
In the November 7, 2006 election several instances of electronic voting
machine failures marred the voting experience for voters in the states
of Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Florida, Maryland and Virginia. The problems
ranged from electronic poll-book failures to insufficient numbers of voting
machines to serve polling locations. The most notable problem was the
failure of the ES&S iVotronic DRE voting system, which resulted a
13% undervote in the race to fill the position for the 13th
Congressional District in Florida. What made this particular race a major
challenge for electronic voting system is the 377-vote margin separating
the top to candidates. It is estimated that 18,000 voters did not have
their preference registered in that race due to a failure of the touch
screen voting system.
This election also signaled greater interest in how changes in voting
technology are impacting voters and election administrators. To learn
more about the adoption of new voting systems Rice University and EPIC’s
voting project conducted a survey of voters in Jefferson County Texas.
This research project is thought to be the first of its kind to be conducted
to determine the impact of recent changes in voting systems. The research
effort looked at an election environment that used the Optical Scan and
DRE voting systems. The research involved data
on how long it took voters to vote on the two types of voting systems,
and collection of voter opinions about their choice of voting system on
Election Day. The analysis of the results of the surveys will take several
weeks.
The introduction of new voting systems into the public election environment
has had other unintended consequences. One of the issues receiving little
attention in the move to modernize the US election process is the reliance
of the system on an army of volunteer poll workers. Poll workers do receive
some financial compensation for their time, but it is minimal in most
cases. The addition of new voting systems does impact the necessary skill
set that poll workers will need to function in the 21st Century
poll location. Compounding the issue of poll worker training is the average
age of poll workers, which in 2004 was estimated to be 70 years of age.
As a consequence, EPIC and Rice University are also involved in a follow
up survey of Jefferson County, Texas poll workers who worked in the November
7, 2006 election to gather information on their experiences. The goal
of this research will be to better inform county election administrators
on the retention, and recruitment of Election Day workers. Like many areas
faced with mass upgrades in technology they have seen a large number of
poll workers indicating that they will not be returning to poll work in
the coming year.
To learn more about EPIC’s voting work visit: http://www.epic.org/privacy/voting
or http://votingintegrity.org/
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