Operator-assisted tabulation of optical scan ballots
Kai Wang, Eric S. Kim, Nicholas Carlini, Ivan Motyashov, Daniel Y. Nguyen, David Wagner · 2012
We present OpenCount: a system that tabulates scanned ballots from an election by combining computer vision algorithms with focused operator assistance. OpenCount is designed to support risk-limiting audits and to be scal-able to large elections, robust to conditions encountered using typical scanner hardware, and general to a wide class of ballot types—all without the need for integra-tion with any vendor systems. To achieve these goals, we introduce a novel operator-in-the-loop computer vi-sion pipeline for automatically processing scanned bal-lots while allowing the operator to intervene in a simple, intuitive manner. We evaluate our system on data col-lected from five risk-limiting audit pilots conducted in California in 2011. 1