Accessible Voting Equipment Challenges: Voter Verified Paper Ballots and More
Diane Cordry Golden · Information technology and disabilities · 2004
INTRODUCTION Landmark federal legislation, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA), was passed on the heels of the voting snafus of the 2000 election with the goal of reforming and improving elections across the country. Part of this improvement includes an expectation that voting equipment will be accessible and will allow voters with disabilities to cast their ballots independently and secretly. To reach this vision, HAVA requires one accessible voting machine at each polling place by January 1 of 2006. Recent information from Election Data Services indicates that: * 32% of voters use optical scan systems (penciled-in ovals, similar to standardized tests), * 29% use electronic voting systems (touch screen, ATM like units), * 18% use punch cards (holes are punched in the ballot card), * 13% use lever machines, * 7% use a mixture of systems, and * less than 1% use paper ballots alone absent some machine tallying like optical scan or punch cards. To date, only electronic voting systems have provided any type of reasonable range of accessibility features for voters with disabilities including alternative input and output options. As anyone familiar with assistive technology understands, electronic information can be manipulated and allows for a variety of options for both input and output. These types of input and output adaptations are much more challenging with paper-based voting. As a natural result, most attention on delivering accessibility as required by HAVA has focused on electronic voting systems. It is important to note that a few companies have attempted to provide input and output adaptations to existing paper-based systems such as optical scan voting. An example is the AutoMark, which uses a traditional optical scan paper ballot, but converts the paper data to electronic data, which is made available in accessible forms. It also supports electronic marking of the paper ballot in place of manual marking. (For more detailed product information see http://www.essvote.com/HTML/products/automark.html.) In a somewhat similar fashion, other companies have developed new voting systems that use a base paper ballot vote, rather than an electronic vote, with an electronic interface for accessing ballot information and for marking the ballot which is then counted in paper ballot form. (For more information see http://www.populex.com as an example of this type of system.) To date, none of these systems have been used in any large-scale election processes. News reports indicate that Arizona is planning to pilot the AutoMark product in the November 2004 general election. The outcome of that experience may provide some indication of the viability of this approach to delivering accessibility. Early in the aftermath of HAVA passage, it appeared that state and local election officials would have a wide range of electronic voting systems available to meet the requirements for one accessible machine per polling place and might also have other options available such as paper-based systems with add-on access features. That would have been ideal as it would have allowed for selection of equipment from a number of options, provided choices to meet unique needs, and created a competitive market. Unfortunately the landscape has changed from the initial positive outlook. Specifically, two major issues have emerged as barriers to the availability of multiple choices in accessible voting systems: 1. the need for verifiable access standards and voting machines that conform to those standards, and 2. the need for consensus on how to make a voter verified paper audit record accessible if one is to be used with a voting machine. NEED FOR VERIFIABLE ACCESS STANDARDS AND MACHINES THAT CONFORM Voting equipment standards, including those specific to accessibility, need to be measurable and conformance needs to be verifiable. …