-----Original Message-----
From: owner-support@dieboldes.com
[mailto:owner-support@dieboldes.com]
On Behalf Of Ken
Sent: December 13, 2002 12:06 PM
To:
support@dieboldes.com
Subject: RE: Maryland Article
I'd like
to hear Sue's take on that as well, but your question is at least partially
answered by the next sentence. "Most of those problems, the study
reported, involved card readers used to activate the machines". I've
always considered the card readers the weakest link in our system,
myself.
I would like to see their data which shows that one-third of
voters not having college education needed assistance from poll workers. I
don't necessarily doubt this, depending on how "assistance" is defined and what
questions the exit pollers asked and how they were asked. It sure does
sound high though. It would be incredibly valuable to know the "top five"
issues the voters needed help with. It would also be interesting to see
comparative stats. For all I know one-third of non-college graduates
require assistance with paper ballot.
Sue, if you can get a copy of the
actual UoM study and post that, it might make an interesting read. Getting
the Washington Post filtered prospective probably doesn't do the study
justice. In particular, most of the reporter's conclusions regarding the
3% were illogical.
Ken
-----Original Message-----
From:
owner-support@dieboldes.com [mailto:owner-support@dieboldes.com]
On
Behalf Of Steve Knecht
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 11:24 AM
To:
support@dieboldes.com
Subject: RE: Maryland Article
Sue, what does
this 3% number reflect?
-----Original Message-----
From:
owner-support@dieboldes.com [mailto:owner-support@dieboldes.com]On
Behalf
Of Sue Page
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 3:10 AM
To:
Support
Subject: Maryland Article
The following article is from
the Washington Post. The article was
printed
in three
different "regional" editions of the paper, and had the following
3
headlines:
Some Voters Flustered by Computers
Computers Flustered
Some Voters, Study Finds
Evaluating The Results Of Bits, Bytes For
Ballots
By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff Writer
Thursday,
December 12, 2002; Page AA03
When the long lines began to snake out
of the polling station in the Montgomery County senior community of Leisure
World, County Council member Steven A. Silverman wondered if elderly voters were
having trouble with the state's new computerized voting machines.
"There
were many people there who told me they were not computer literate, that they
don't even use ATMs," Silverman (D-At Large) said.
Silverman's hunch now
appears to be supported by a comprehensive study of voters' first brush with
computerized voting machines, used for the first time in four Maryland counties:
Montgomery, Prince George's, Dorchester and Allegany.
Exit polling by
University of Maryland researchers found that one-third of voters who lacked a
college education needed help to use the machines; one-quarter of those who said
they had infrequently used computers sought help with the machines; and about
one-sixth of all voters said they got assistance from election
judges.
"What this signals is that there are real privacy issues that
need to be dealt with when voters are using the computerized machines, and there
are serious usability issues that are extremely important," said Paul Herrnson,
who heads the University of Maryland's Center for American Politics and
Citizenship and was co-director of the study.
The General Assembly
decided last year to overhaul Maryland's voting system in response to the
Florida ballot count that delayed the results of the 2000 presidential election
for weeks.
State budget officials decided to replace outdated systems in
Montgomery, Prince George's, Allegany and Dorchester counties for this year's
elections and to install computerized voting machines statewide by
2006.
The four counties and the state split the $15 million cost of the
new AccuVote-TS system, manufactured by Global/Diebold Election Systems in
Ohio.
Although the machines' inaugural run was relatively smooth in the
other counties, confusion reigned in Montgomery during the September primaries.
Several polling places opened late because the equipment was not set up.
Inaccurate results were posted on the county Web site, while judges struggled
through complicated forms and tabulations.
Instead of sending results by
modem, poll workers had to drive computer disks across the county to the
elections board in Rockville and faced long lines upon arrival. And nearly 100
machines were delivered whole to the county board by frustrated poll
workers.
The University of Maryland study, however, focused on the ease
of voter use and tried to gauge how voters responded to the new
machines.
In addition to the voters who needed help to fill out their
ballots, the study found that a small percentage of the machines -- about 3
percent
--
malfunctioned in some manner.
Most of those problems,
the study reported, involved card readers used to activate the machines.
Election judges in some precincts addressed the problem by inserting the card
for voters. Some voters also reported trouble navigating from screen to screen,
especially in the "ballot review" section.
Herrnson said that although 3
percent sounds like a small figure, Florida's 2000 presidential election debacle
was a reminder that perfection should be the goal.
"In several House
races in Maryland, there was voter turnout of 200,000, so in those cases, 3
percent starts to sound like a pretty big number," he said.
Herrnson said
he witnessed some of the trouble voters were having when he went to the polls in
his hometown of Hyattsville.
"After I voted, I sat down and watched as
people raised their hand while they were voting to ask for help," he
said.
He said the study recently was submitted to the state Board of
Elections for review, and he hopes that as the machines become more common, the
board will devote more time to educating the public about how to use
them.
Margaret Jurgensen, election director for Montgomery County, said
she found the machines to be popular with voters and was pleased with the
initial experience. She said her staff will continue to emphasize training of
poll workers as well as programs to educate voters on the new machines. "This is
the first year this has been deployed," she said. "There's always going to be a
learning curve."
State board officials could not be reached to comment on
the study, but on Election Day last month, they defended the performance of the
new machines, saying that a few glitches should be expected with a new
product.
And in Montgomery County, although some voters had trouble, the
problems were far from universal.
"It was wonderful, and I'm not even
computer literate," Winnie Soltz, 62, told a reporter. The Gaithersburg
substitute teacher had just cast her ballot, without any difficulty at
all.
__________
(Note that on election day, we saw the long lines in
Leisure World. We tried in vain to get Montgomery County to deploy 10 more
of their 60 "spare"
units to this location. Doing so would have
reduced the long lines,
and
this article may have been different.
On
the flip side - because of lines in some precincts, Montgomery County will be
purchasing additional units - maybe as many as 1,000. Works
for
us!)