Sent: Friday, April 20, 2001 1:03
PM
Subject: RE: AccuVote R6 & Cancel
Button
To all support and sales people;
Well, I'm neither of these but that won't stop
me.
Everyone in the field that I have spoken
to has informed me that the Cancel Button on the Ballot Cast Screen must be
hidden from the voters and that cancelling a ballot requires poll worker
intervention.
Hiding the cancel
button is not a reasonable solution. I feel pretty strongly about
this. Never mind the fact that, as a voter, I think I have the right to
cancel what I am doing and go home. Funny the banks don't have a problem
with this.
Tell me, what is
Global's position going to be when some newspaper or web page runs a story
about the secret hidden button? How long will it take in a million-voter
jurisdiction before the button becomes common knowledge? Next we are
going to have wannabe hackers trying secret knocks on the start screen to find
the "other" hidden
features.
What do you think Mr.
Shamus or Mr. Craft will think about our little back door? Oh, don't
worry about it guys. This is the only place we have a hidden button
with, by your argument, administrative functionality.
Really.
Since these people have run TS elections
I must defer to [their] judgement unless I hear
otherwise.
Fine. But then I think we should require from
"these people", at minimum, a written paragraph explaining their
reasoning. I am hassled all the time about the lack of
documentation for our designs. Well, lets have it. Lets have a
paragraph explaining why "the Cancel Button on the Ballot Cast Screen must be
hidden from the voters and that canceling a ballot requires poll worker
intervention". I'd love to read it. I don't think
this behavior should be undertaken without this. This is not an
unreasonable request.
Second, I would like to know if there is any other
system in existence that has such a hidden button. That in itself would
not be a sufficient reason to accept or reject the idea, but it would help to
know we are not alone in this decision.
When a ballot is cancelled what should happen
to the voter card. There are three
possibilities.
The
shame here is that we had a perfectly good design for this without the
locking reader. Removing the card gave the voter the option to cancel
the ballot. But that is a dead horse.
The
motivation here appears to be that the poll worker must intervene to cancel
the ballot. The hidden button doesn't even satisfy that, since the voter
can find the once they read about it in the paper. Here is one proposal:
- Leave the cancel button on the
screen.
-
When the user presses the cancel button, open a new
screen that has a poll worker PIN, and a resume voting
button.
-
A poll worker needs to enter the PIN to cancel the
ballot and release the card.
I have to underline though, that I am at a complete
loss as to why it is unreasonable for a voter to cancel their ballot.
Hell, they can walk away from the machine with the card still in the machine
if they feel like it. This just doesn't make sense to
me.
Ken