State of the Industry:
Compatibility of Voting Equipment with Ranked Ballots

Caleb Kleppner, Center for Voting and Democracy
415-824-2735 (ph/fax), calebk@fairvote.org
Revised January 2001

Introduction

Growing interest in instant runoff voting (IRV) has raised the issue of the compatibility of voting equipment with ranked ballot voting systems. IRV legislation has been passed in Oakland (CA), San Leandro (CA), Vancouver (WA) and Santa Clara County (CA), will appear on the ballot in Alaska in 2002 and is under serious consideration in New Mexico, Vermont, Texas, North Carolina and Georgia; in Austin (TX), Prince George’s County (MD) and many other municipalities.

Meanwhile, in the wake of the Florida debacle, many jurisdictions are implementing or considering changes in equipment or voting procedures. These changes could affect IRV compatibility. Many jurisdictions are replacing older voting equipment with more modern technology, and some are considering the use of vote-by-mail and Internet voting. The state of Oregon switched to an all-mail voting system and as a result is enjoying higher voter turnout and cost-savings of around $3 million per election cycle. In Florida, election officials have conducted a field test of Internet voting, and the US military is considering Internet voting for overseas members of the armed forces.

While it remains unclear how many jurisdictions will ultimately switch to vote-by-mail and Internet voting, the trend in voting equipment is clearly away from punch card, push button and lever systems and toward the more modern optical scanning and computer touch screen systems. This is a promising development for supporters of IRV because in general, new optical scanning and touch screen equipment are compatible with ranked ballots and the older technologies are not.

In addition to addressing compatibility with ranked ballots, jurisdictions acquiring new voting equipment should also consider absentee voting. Optical scanning allows jurisdiction to use the same equipment for absentee voting that they use for precinct voting. Optical scanning also allows jurisdictions to switch to all mail voting without changing their equipment. Some election officials have expressed support for electronic Direct Recording Equipment such as computer touch screens because they eliminate the need for printing and distributing ballots. Such equipment has its limitations. Touch screen voting is only suitable for precinct polling, and jurisdictions that use touch screen equipment must make other arrangements for absentee voting.

The rest of this report consists of sections on the main equipment vendors, an assessment of the compatibility of optical scanning equipment, touch screen equipment, and methods to implement IRV using existing equipment.

Vendors

Global Election Services (Global), Sequoia Pacific (Sequoia) and Election Systems & Software (ESS) control a large portion of the US market for new election equipment. Active internationally, Sequoia and ESS were finalists in the bid to supply voting equipment in London, which will used IRV to elect the mayor in May 2000.  Unilect also produces touch screen voting equipment used in some US jurisdictions, and a variety of other small and large companies are entering the US market.

Sequoia and ESS supply and service a common line of optical scanning equipment because they acquired the remains of the Business Records Corporation (BRC) when the federal government broke it up in an anti-trust action. According to the terms of the break up, ESS services customers who had been using BRC equipment prior to November 1998, and Sequoia may not have any contact with those customers. Both companies continue to develop new equipment and markets.

All three vendors supply optical scanning and touch-screen voting equipment.  

Compatibility of Optical Scanning Equipment

Electronic DREs are highly compatible with IRV, while punch card, push-button DREs such as the AVC Advantage and the Shouptronic 1242, and lever machines are highly incompatible. This section addresses the compatibility of the optical scanning systems that are becoming increasingly popular.  

Global:  Global markets the only optical scanner currently used in the United States for public, ranked ballot elections. These elections take place in Cambridge MA. The Global Accuvote is a precinct-scanning machine that costs under $5,000. Voters fill in bubbles to indicate their votes. The ballot resembles the computer forms often used on standardized tests. In the same election, Cambridge combines plurality elections with a ranked ballot election, and voters fill out one ballot with the plurality elections on it and another with the ranked ballot election.

The ranked ballot lists all of the candidates followed by eight columns of bubbles (click here to view a sample ballot ). The instructions to the voter read, "Fill in the number one 1 oval next to your first choice; fill in the number two 2 oval next to your second choice; fill in the number three 3 oval next to your third choice, and so on. You may fill in as many choices as you please. Fill in no more than one oval per candidate. Fill in no more than one oval per column."

The Accuvote can read 32 columns of voting marks, which cover the entire width of the ballot. This means that the ballot design and voting equipment permit voters to rank many choices. For example, the November 1997 school committee election allowed voters to rank up to 8 candidates.

In Cambridge, the plurality ballots are counted first. Then election officials swap a memory chip containing software for storing rankings and run the ranked ballots through the equipment.

This system runs on a Unix platform, which the company is no longer supporting. New Accuvote equipment runs on a Windows NT system. The company has estimated a cost of $250,000 to port the ranked ballot software from Unix to Windows. It is not known if this estimate will come down or if several jurisdictions could share the cost, although both are possible and have been discussed with the company.

Sequoia Pacific:  Sequoia markets equipment for precinct scanning -- the Optech Eagle -- and for central scanning -- the Optech IV-C. The Eagle is manually fed, processes approximately 1,500 ballots per hour, and costs around $5,000 apiece. According to John Homewood, managing engineer at Sequoia, the company is not supporting the use of ranked ballots with the Eagle. The Eagle can only scan 4 columns of voting marks spaced evenly across the ballot. This leaves only 3 columns to the right of a list of candidate names, which imposes restrictions on ballot design and the allowable number of rankings.

The Optech IV-C is a central scanning unit with an automatic feeder that scans 20,000 ballots per hour and costs approximately $50,000. The machine, which includes a personal computer and a modem, is fully compatible with ranked ballots, although like the Eagle, it only reads 4 columns of voting marks. Sequoia bid to supply IV-Cs for London. Making Optech IV-Cs currently in use compatible with IRV would presumably only require loading the new software developed for use in London. For jurisdictions counting more than 50,000 ballots on Election Day, the central-scanning system is probably the option with the lowest capital and operating costs compared to precinct-scanning or touch screen equipment.

ESS:  ESS markets a precinct scanner, the ESS 100, that is essentially the same as the Optech Eagle, and a central scanner, the ESS 550, that is essentially an Optech IV-C. ESS also services the customers who were using Optech equipment before the breakup of BRC. San Francisco uses the ESS precinct scanner, and when IRV legislation was introduced, the ESS representative certified that the precinct scanners could be made IRV-compatible at no additional cost to the city.

Like the Optech Eagle, the ESS 100 and 550 can only read 4 columns of voting marks.

ESS bid to supply the ESS 550 to London. Presumably making ESS 550s or Optech IV-Cs serviced by ESS compatible would only require loading software that ESS is developing. Central-scanning potentially involves the lowest capital and operating costs compared to precinct scanning and touch screen systems.

Electronic Direct Recording Equipment (DRE)

All three large vendors along with Unilect and smaller vendors have developed and deployed electronic DREs that are compatible with ranked ballots. The California Secretary of State certified Sequoia’s touch screen system on July 20, 1999, and Riverside County has implemented this system in all precincts. Alameda County is in the process of acquiring Global touch screen equipment for all precincts.  

The Republic of Ireland, which uses ranked ballot voting system for local, state and federal elections, is purchasing touch screen equipment for use in all precincts.  A Dutch company, Nedap, won the contract, although several American firms bid.

Other Approaches

For jurisdictions that do not acquire new equipment or software designed to handle ranked ballots, in addition to a hand count, there are three other approaches for implementing IRV and other ranked ballot elections using existing equipment. These methods – the recount method, the pairing method and the stored pairs method – handle ranked ballots, although they have shortcomings, so they are primarily recommended as provisional methods until fully compatible equipment is adopted. The recount method can be used with any equipment that enables the voter to hand write a second and third choice on the physical ballot. Such equipment includes punch card and optical scanning equipment but excludes lever push button and electronic DREs.

The pairing method involves listing each possible pairing of first and second choices on the ballot. This will work with any type of equipment although listing all possible pairings in races with large numbers of candidates may exhaust the space on the ballot. The stored pairs method requires the equipment to interpret separate votes for a first and second choices as a pairing and then store totals for each possible pairing. We believe that new optical scanning and touch screen equipment could use this method, but we have not been able to confirm if push button machines such as the AVC Advantage or punch card systems can handle this. 

Conclusion

Jurisdictions wishing to ensure compatibility of new voting equipment with ranked ballot systems have several options. The Global Accuvote is a precinct-scanning unit that is currently used in ranked ballot elections in the United States.

The Sequoia Pacific Optech IV-C and the ESS 550 are similar central-scanning units whose vendors are developing the necessary software for ranked ballot elections.

All three of these vendors as well as other American and international companies make electronic DREs that are fully compatible with ranked ballots.

The optical scanners provide maximum flexibility for absentee voting and vote by mail, whereas the touch screen systems are only suitable for precinct balloting.

Central-scanning units provide the lowest cost solution for moderately- to large-sized jurisdictions (over 50,000 ballots). On the other hand, touch screens eliminate the cost and hassle of printing and handling ballots.