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Below posted at the request
of Mr. Pickett who is having email difficulties. Jeff’s original inquiry was triggered from our having
received and tested 12 of the pre-production Touch Screen Units on 10/9 in
preparation for early voting in Forsyth County NC. They started early voting on 10/16. There are 5 sights, which include the
election office and 4 satellite locations. The NC early voting law was recently passed and this is the
first North Carolina election that no excuse early voting has been allowed and
the first time for satellite locations.
Forsyth County has 220,000 registered, and over the first 2 weeks of
early voting 6,500 voters have voted early. There has been a steady increase on a daily basis, as voters
have become aware of the no excuse early voting option. The county has 110 precincts and 25 ballot
styles. The ballot styles are
loaded into the lap top poll books and the precinct workers have a cross
reference list that identifies the precincts by ballot style so they can create
the proper voter access card. The
election board, election officials, precinct workers and voters all have had
very positive comments concerning the process and the AccuVote Ballot
Station. However, there has been
one area of concern relating to the voting process, and that has to do with the
voter being able to remove the card after touching the cast ballot button but
before the card is erased by the software. In Forsyth County the election officials love our pre-production
touch screen ballot station. The
only flaw they see is the problem created by the non-locking card reader and
they expect to see a real solution, to that problem in the production units. They feel that if it causes problems in
5 early voting precincts, it will really present problems on election day in
110 precincts. I think a big part of the problem is the fact that it
takes 8 to 10 seconds after the voter touches the cast ballot button for the
ballot station to complete the process and tell the voter that his vote has
been counted. The voter touches
the cast ballot button, assumes that he is finished, pulls his card out and
leaves. The same thing happens
with our units in Gaston County.
The difference is that the card reader will not release the card until
it is finished with it, however, even in Gaston we have trouble with voters on
rare occasions managing to remove the card too early. As you may know, when a voter removes his voter card
prior to the software completing its cycle, a message appears on the screen
indicating a problem. Some voters
actually read the message and ask for help. For those voters who ask for help, the poll worker goes over
to their ballot station and touches the cast ballot button on the ballot
station causing the ballot to be cancelled. The voter must then be moved back to the head of the voter
card line where his ballot style is reconfirmed and he is reissued a new voter
card. This is an awkward process
that interrupts the normal voting process and makes our system look bad. Then there is the voter who pays no attention to the
message. He removes his card,
return his card, and leaves the polling place thinking that he has completed
voting. The next voter approaches
the ballot station and cannot vote until a poll worker corrects the
problem. The previous voters
ballot is canceled and the poll book and public counter are off by one
vote. In this instance the
AccuVote TS System loses credibility when its public counter does not match the
poll book. This Is similar to what
happens when the AccuVote skips a ballot causing the poll book to show more
voters than does the AccuVote’s public counter. The difference being that in one instance you have the paper
ballots that allow you to reconstruct the election while in the other there is
no recovery. Even though we have printed up signs that attach to
the front of the voting booths and the poll workers are reminding the voters to
leave the card in until told by the unit to remove it, we are still
experiencing a problem. Early on,
someone at I-Mark probably recognized this as a problem and corrected it with a
locking card reader. We have made
a decision to eliminate the locking card reader with no consideration or
knowledge of the consequences, and with no input from the field where we
understand the consequences.
Instead, we in the field are expected to come up with some procedure
that will minimize the damage where there should be no damage. For what its worth, you will have a
hard time trying to convince me that you can get all voters to read and
interpret a message, however, I’ll keep a partially open mind. We need to put our heads together and
come up with a real solution and then, if possible, field test it. -----Original Message----- It IS
important that the card locks in the reader. Voters tend to remove the
card (they think it is a "swipe" device, etc). Additionally,
the Sequoia unit locks the card, AND "marks" the card as already
voted when it is reinserted in their "poll manager/burner"
unit. This is important if a voter insists his/her vote was not
recorded. The
important point is that we should never be making these decisions without
appropriate input from the marketplace. This is a major mistake and has
proven to be the downfall of our competitors. (ie BRC Eagle, AIS 100). The
appropriate input is vital. We must design based upon input from the
field. This
dialog should be expanded. From: Talbot Iredale To: support@gesn.com Sent: Thursday, October 26,
2000 3:27 PM Subject: Re:
New AVTS units - Card reader questions We are
looking at getting the card reader mounted the same way up as the current AVTS
units. The
card readers will never lock the card but the software will display a message
if the card is removed and allow the card to be re-inserted. Tab ----- Original Message
-----
Sent: Thursday, October 26, 2000 2:35 PM Subject: New AVTS units - Card reader questions I worked with the new
AVTS models a couple of weeks ago in Forsythe County, NC. I have a couple
of questions concerning the Card reader on those new models. 1) Will we have to
insert the card upside down always, or is this something that will be fixed in
the future??? 2) Will the card readers
never be locking, or is there going to be some different card readers installed
in the future that do lock??? Jeff Hintz Global Election Systems |