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Letter from Cambridge, MA
about
ranked ballot compatibility
April 7, 2003
The Cambridge, Massachusetts city clerk, Theresa Neighbor, wrote
the following letter describing Cambridge's experience in adopting optical scan
voting equipment that is capable of conducting ranked-ballot elections.
(original on letterhead)
April 7, 2003
To Whom It May Concern:
Since 1941 the City of Cambridge, Massachusetts, has used
“choice” voting to elect its City Council and School Committee. Until 1997
paper ballots were tallied by hand, a process that took approximately one
hundred workers and six days to complete. Plurality elections were conducted
using a punch card system.
Computerization of the “choice” count in 1997 made it
possible to perform the tallying function electronically. The computerized
election system has two major components: a precinct-based optical scanning
system (AccuVote) and a software program (Choice Plus Pro) which tallies the
ballots. The optical scanner records an electronic image of the ballot as it
passes into the ballot box. That image is captured on a memory card which is
uploaded on election night to a computer which separates the ballot records by
race without tallying them. The ballot records are then copied to a disk which
is uploaded to another computer. The second computer contains the software that
tallies the ballots.
The process that led to computerization began in 1995 when
the Cambridge Board of Election Commissioners formed a Technical Working
Committee for Computerization of Cambridge Elections (TWCC) to explore voting
systems that could accommodate both plurality and “choice” voting. A Request
for Information (RFI) was sent to twenty-six vendors approved by the Federal
Election Commission (FEC), ten of whom responded. The proposed systems tended
primarily to direct recording devices (touch screen) and optical scanners using
Marksense ballots.
Based on performance measures and a cost-benefit analysis,
the Committee unanimously recommended the adoption of an optical scanning system
using Marksense ballots for all Cambridge elections. Direct recording systems
were considered a too costly and immature technology to warrant consideration at
that time. As of this writing, no direct recording systems have been certified
by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. (Please refer to “The Report of the
Technical Working Committee for the Computerization of Cambridge Elections,”
January 3, 1996, for a full documentation of the process.)
The issuing of an RFP for an optical scanning system using
Marksense ballots for both plurality and “choice” elections yielded one
response – from LHS Associates, Inc. , a distributor of the AccuVote ES-2000
for Global Election Systems (now Diebold), one of two optical scanning systems
certified by the Secretary of the Commonwealth for use in Massachusetts
elections. Included in the extensive criteria was a “guarantee of
compatibility with tabulating software.” Adapting the AccuVote ES-2000 to
accommodate “choice” voting involved the development of software that would
“scan, record, and read out,” rather than tabulate, “choice” ballots for
City Council and School Committee. There was a one-time cost of $40,000 for the
software development that was independent of the number of voting machines. The
adapted system would permit ballot questions to be tabulated in the usual
manner.
Choice Plus Pro, the tabulation software produced by Voting
Solutions, Inc., cost the City $14,500 and included a variety of features geared
specifically to the Cambridge Rules for tallying ”choice” voting.
AccuVote was first used in a plurality election in
Cambridge in September, 1996. The fully computerized system for “choice”
voting was successfully demonstrated and approved for field testing by the
Elections Division of the Office of the Secretary of the Commonwealth of
Massachusetts in May, 1997. It was implemented for the first time in the
November Municipal Election later that year and was subsequently certified by
the Commonwealth for use in all “choice” elections in Cambridge.
Sincerely,
/s/
Teresa S. Neighbor |
