Friday, June 03, 2005
The Merits of Optical Scan?
This is a very nicely done piece from someone who actually runs elections in Chicago, IL.
http://www.voterinfonet.com/sub/news_view.asp?NEWS_ID=125
However - its still not goof proof - this scanning system can still be interfered with and produce a phoney result (by tampering with the tallying count software) - but assuming the right safeguards in place - it would be possible to detect that post-election by hand counting enough of the scan cards.
So - overall - it offers better audit trail than a DRE, but still not TLV levels of trust - but I'd say better trust than the DRE approach alone.
Blind voters and disabled voters would still not like this as much - but given that this could provide a more reliable approach than DRE at a fraction of the cost - I'd say - better option - until a certified TLV-based system is available.
I think though in a really close election in a critical State - there would be challenges - and it would take time to sort that all out. That's one of the supposed benefits of using DRE's in the first place - but sadly the reverse has been the case.
The districting issues in Chicago certainly are a real challenge - to match the right voter to the right ballot, along with the huge number of items placed on referendum and marked for voters to decide. Including a computer in the process to print out the scan ballot could definately improve that matching process, along with making it easier for voters to know what they voted for. And would solve the blind / disabled voter part, and of course make multi-lingual balloting easier.
It is impressive that voters are able to cope with the complexity of this Chicago voting system today using a bubble style multi-choice optical scan form.
Then again - a State could happily adopt optical scanning right now - knowing that they could upgrade to a full TLV system later, once that had been fully developed and certified, and the scanner devices would be 100% re-usable as part of that.
The rush to DRE certainly is not justified by the current raft of issues with DREs from trust to reliability to high costs.
In Maryland alone the State is spending over $80M to date on DRE devices - with 3M registered voters, of whom about 1.5M vote regularly that is around $53 per vote for equipment - just to fill out a government form one day every two or three years!
If this was being spent for vehicle registration or similar, there would be an outcry about the wanton waste of public funds. Clearly the vendors getting this largess from the public purse have some friends in high places making it happen.
http://www.voterinfonet.com/sub/news_view.asp?NEWS_ID=125
However - its still not goof proof - this scanning system can still be interfered with and produce a phoney result (by tampering with the tallying count software) - but assuming the right safeguards in place - it would be possible to detect that post-election by hand counting enough of the scan cards.
So - overall - it offers better audit trail than a DRE, but still not TLV levels of trust - but I'd say better trust than the DRE approach alone.
Blind voters and disabled voters would still not like this as much - but given that this could provide a more reliable approach than DRE at a fraction of the cost - I'd say - better option - until a certified TLV-based system is available.
I think though in a really close election in a critical State - there would be challenges - and it would take time to sort that all out. That's one of the supposed benefits of using DRE's in the first place - but sadly the reverse has been the case.
The districting issues in Chicago certainly are a real challenge - to match the right voter to the right ballot, along with the huge number of items placed on referendum and marked for voters to decide. Including a computer in the process to print out the scan ballot could definately improve that matching process, along with making it easier for voters to know what they voted for. And would solve the blind / disabled voter part, and of course make multi-lingual balloting easier.
It is impressive that voters are able to cope with the complexity of this Chicago voting system today using a bubble style multi-choice optical scan form.
Then again - a State could happily adopt optical scanning right now - knowing that they could upgrade to a full TLV system later, once that had been fully developed and certified, and the scanner devices would be 100% re-usable as part of that.
The rush to DRE certainly is not justified by the current raft of issues with DREs from trust to reliability to high costs.
In Maryland alone the State is spending over $80M to date on DRE devices - with 3M registered voters, of whom about 1.5M vote regularly that is around $53 per vote for equipment - just to fill out a government form one day every two or three years!
If this was being spent for vehicle registration or similar, there would be an outcry about the wanton waste of public funds. Clearly the vendors getting this largess from the public purse have some friends in high places making it happen.
# posted by DRRW @ 9:55 PM 
