Modernizing Voting
Equipment: Guidelines for Ensuring Security and Reliability
Revised Feb
2003
Incompatible voting equipment can
prove an insurmountable obstacle to adopting ranking ballot voting systems such as instant runoff
voting and choice voting. Concerns about voting equipment and
election administrations effectively eclipsed political
support for legislation in Cincinnati in 1991, New Mexico
in 1998 and Eugene in 2001. On the other hand,
in Santa Clara County, San Leandro and Oakland, legislation
making instant runoff voting an option contingent on available equipment
was passed by the voters.
It is therefore essential that reformers
advocate for ballot type flexibility in legislation to fund
or establish standards for new equiment and in Requests for
Proposals (RFPs) when counties and states acquire new voting
equipment.
Please contact the Center for Voting and Democracy
at [email protected] if you
need any assistance.
The good news is that most new voting equipment is or
can be compatible with ranked ballot elections at no additional cost
and that there are sound, good government reasons for such
flexibility that have nothing to do with ranked ballot
elections.
The clearest way to ensure equipment compatibility is
to include in an RFP or legislation the following requirement:
All new voting systems purchased or leased
shall be able to implement ranked order voting and cumulative voting
in the first election in which the equipment is used.
This would not only ensure compatibility but also
timeliness: the vendor would not be able to claim that they
needed additional time and money to modify software or hardware.
There are two other approaches that can be used in
addition to or instead of the above one:
-
All new paper-based voting equipment
should store electronic records of each
ballot.
-
All new voting equipment should be able to
accommodate all ballot types currently used in US
elections.
The argument for the first provision is that it
provides important security to paper-based ballots. If a paper
ballot is altered after it is cast, either fraudulently or
inadvertently through routine handling during a recount, it is
almost impossible to detect and correct the alteration. An
anonymous, electronic record of each ballot allows the detection and
correction of any alteration to a ballot that occurs after the
ballot is cast.
The second provision is a matter of prudence: if
a jurisdiction is paying large sums of money to buy new voting
equipment, it should accommodate any ballot type that the
jurisdiction might want to adopt in the future. There are
currently 4 ballot types in use in US public elections:
-
Vote for 1 candidate only (plurality and runoff
elections)
-
Vote for more than 1 candidates (at-large
plurality and limited voting)
-
Give more than one vote to one or more candidates
(cumulative voting)
-
Rank candidates in order of choice (instant runoff
and choice voting)
The Center submitted comments
to the FEC along these lines, and leading civil rights and civic
groups signed a letter on flexibility in voting
equipment. Please feel free to use the information and
language in them.
Several jurisdictions, including Travis County (TX),
Alameda County (CA) and Santa Clara County (CA), have included
provisions on ranked ballot compatibility in RFPs that they
have released.
In Alameda County, which has deployed a touch
screen system for precincts combined with optical scanners for
absentee ballots, the RFP included the statement, "Each vendor must be able
to specify how their proposed system will be able to address the
following specific requirements." It then lists a series of
questions, including:
How will the [voting equipment] manage
alternative voting system such as cumulative or preferential
voting?
Other questions addressed space on the ballot
(there are often large numbers of candidates and measures on
California ballots), allowing disabled voters to cast secret
ballots, handling multiple ballot types, and the use of multiple
languages on the ballot.
The Center would be glad
to provide public comments on these matters. Please contact us
if you think it's possible to include pertinent provisions in
legislation or RFPs:
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