EVMs

On March 13, 2007, the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project convened a Voting Systems Vendor Workshop on the Caltech campus involving a small group of academics and representatives from the voting systems industry. As an outcome of this one-day event, we present the following report and recommendations. This event was supported by grants from The Carnegie Corporation of New York and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. We thank them for their support of our ongoing efforts.

This study examines the confidence that voters have that their ballot was counted accurately in 2004 and the attitudes of the American public toward electronic voting. As many states and localities move to new—and often electronic—voting systems, understanding public confidence and public attitudes is critical for policy makers. This study includes several key findings:

A user manual for LEVI voting systems.

This study shows how ballot interfaces variably affect the voting performance of people with different abilities. An interface with all information viewable simultaneously might either help orient or overwhelm a voter, depending on his/her skill-set. Voters with diagnosed reading disabilities performed significantly better on full-faced voting machines than those who demonstrated a high likelihood of similar, but undiagnosed, disabilities. In contrast, the diagnosed group performed worse than others when using standard-sized Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) systems.