Electronic pollbook

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An electronic pollbook, also known as an e-pollbook, is typically either hardware, software or a combination of the two that allows election officials to review and/or maintain voter register information for an election, but does not actually count votes. [1] This software or hardware is used in place of paper-based pollbooks, which are typically three-ring binders. Often, the functions of an e-pollbook include voter lookup, verification, identification, precinct assignment, ballot assignment, voter history update and other functions such as name change, address change and/or redirecting voters to correct voting location.

When voters have a choice of multiple vote centers where they may vote, e-pollbooks communicating over the internet can prevent a voter from voting more than once. [2]

Where e-pollbooks are deployed, they have consolidated broad data (from entire city, county and/or federated state) into usable information at a polling place and have replaced a paper-based system or complemented the paper processes. This consolidation has replaced or supplemented a manual process, usually a telephone call, from a precinct back to the local or regional board of elections. Normally, the information handled by an e-pollbook is public information that can be found in public or online.

More jurisdictions are adopting electronic pollbooks in place of paper-based pollbooks. For example, in January 2014, the City of Chicago reached an agreement with Election Systems & Software [3] to provide more than 2,100 ExpressPoll voter check-in and verification devices to support the city's 1.6 million registered voters. [4] The e-pollbook system was first used in Chicago's 2014 primary elections.

Issues

In 2023 a contractor, WSD Digital, developing a voter registration and e-pollbook system for New Hampshire put in code to link to websites in Russia and used open source software managed by a Russian. New Hampshire found those issues by hiring another company, ReversingLabs, to review the code of the first company. [5]

In 2020 Williamson County TX found two problems: that its use of e-pollbooks sometimes assigned the wrong ballot style to voters, so they voted on contests outside their area, and did not vote on contests in their own area; and that some ballots did not display the voters' precincts. [6]

In 2006, at least two vendors had problems with e-pollbooks, including Diebold in Maryland in September 2006 [7] and Sequoia Voting Systems in Denver, Colorado in November 2006. [8]

Related Research Articles

A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in voting. It was originally a small ball used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16th century.

A voting machine is a machine used to record votes in an election without paper. The first voting machines were mechanical but it is increasingly more common to use electronic voting machines. Traditionally, a voting machine has been defined by its mechanism, and whether the system tallies votes at each voting location, or centrally. Voting machines should not be confused with tabulating machines, which count votes done by paper ballot.

Electronic voting is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or take care of casting and counting ballots including voting time.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic voting in India</span> Component of Indian electoral system

Electronic voting is the standard means of conducting elections using Electronic Voting Machines (EVMs) in India. The system was developed for the Election Commission of India by state-owned Electronics Corporation of India and Bharat Electronics. Starting in the late 1990s, they were introduced in Indian elections in a phased manner.

Black box voting is any system of voting on voting machines which does not disclose how the system operates, such as systems based on closed source software or other proprietary components. If a voting machine does not provide a tangible record of individual votes cast, it can be described as "black box voting".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Polling station</span> Place where voters cast their ballots in elections

A polling place is where voters cast their ballots in elections. The phrase polling station is also used in American English and British English, although a polling place is the building and polling station is the specific room where voters cast their votes. A polling place can contain one or more polling stations. In Australian English, "polling place" is used. Americans also use the term voting precinct in some states.

An electronic voting machine is a voting machine based on electronics. Two main technologies exist: optical scanning and direct recording (DRE).

Vote counting is the process of counting votes in an election. It can be done manually or by machines. In the United States, the compilation of election returns and validation of the outcome that forms the basis of the official results is called canvassing.

Voter verifiable paper audit trail (VVPAT) or verified paper record (VPR) is a method of providing feedback to voters who use an electronic voting system. A VVPAT allows voters to verify that their vote was cast correctly, to detect possible election fraud or malfunction, and to provide a means to audit the stored electronic results. It contains the name and party affiliation of candidates for whom the vote has been cast. While VVPAT has gained in use in the United States compared with ballotless voting systems without it, hand-marked ballots are used by a greater proportion of jurisdictions.

During the 2004 United States elections, there was controversy around various aspects of the voting process, including whether voting had been made accessible to all those entitled to vote, whether ineligible voters were registered, whether voters were registered multiple times, and whether the votes cast had been correctly counted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Election Systems & Software</span> Voting machine manufacturer in Nebraska, US

Election Systems & Software is an Omaha, Nebraska-based company that manufactures and sells voting machine equipment and services. The company's offerings include vote tabulators, DRE voting machines, voter registration and election management systems, ballot-marking devices, electronic poll books, ballot on demand printing services, and absentee voting-by-mail services.

A DRE voting machine, or direct-recording electronic voting machine, records votes by means of a ballot display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter. These are typically buttons or a touchscreen; and they process data using a computer program to record voting data and ballot images in memory components. After the election, it produces a tabulation of the voting data stored in a removable memory component and as printed copy. The system may also provide a means for transmitting individual ballots or vote totals to a central location for consolidating and reporting results from precincts at the central location. The device started to be massively used in 1996 in Brazil where 100% of the elections voting system is carried out using machines.

End-to-end auditable or end-to-end voter verifiable (E2E) systems are voting systems with stringent integrity properties and strong tamper resistance. E2E systems use cryptographic techniques to provide voters with receipts that allow them to verify their votes were counted as cast, without revealing which candidates a voter supported to an external party. As such, these systems are sometimes called receipt-based systems.

An optical scan voting system is an electronic voting system and uses an optical scanner to read marked paper ballots and tally the results.

Electoral reform in Florida refers to efforts to change the voting and election laws in the United States state of Florida.

Electronic voting by country varies and may include voting machines in polling places, centralized tallying of paper ballots, and internet voting. Many countries use centralized tallying. Some also use electronic voting machines in polling places. Very few use internet voting. Several countries have tried electronic approaches and stopped because of difficulties or concerns about security and reliability.

Scantegrity is a security enhancement for optical scan voting systems, providing such systems with end-to-end (E2E) verifiability of election results. It uses confirmation codes to allow a voter to prove to themselves that their ballot is included unmodified in the final tally. The codes are privacy-preserving and offer no proof of which candidate a voter voted for. Receipts can be safely shown without compromising ballot secrecy.

A ballot marking device (BMD) or vote recorder is a type of voting machine used by voters to record votes on physical ballots. In general, ballot marking devices neither store nor tabulate ballots, but only allow the voter to record votes on ballots that are then stored and tabulated elsewhere.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Election audit</span>

An election audit is any review conducted after polls close for the purpose of determining whether the votes were counted accurately or whether proper procedures were followed, or both.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Electronic voting in the United States</span> Facet of American elections

Electronic voting in the United States involves several types of machines: touchscreens for voters to mark choices, scanners to read paper ballots, scanners to verify signatures on envelopes of absentee ballots, adjudication machines to allow corrections to improperly filled in items, and web servers to display tallies to the public. Aside from voting, there are also computer systems to maintain voter registrations and display these electoral rolls to polling place staff.

References

  1. ↑ Electronic Poll Books https://www.ncsl.org/research/elections-and-campaigns/electronic-pollbooks.aspx
  2. ↑ Orange County Registrar of Voters (2017-04-02). "Voter's Choice Act Versus Traditional Election Models" (PDF). California Association of Clerks and Elections Officials.
  3. ↑ Election Systems & Software We Support Elections
  4. ↑ "After Primary Election Success with Electronic Poll Books_ Chicago and ES&S Look Ahead to November". article.wn.com.
  5. ↑ Sakellariadis, John (2024-09-01). "Hacking blind spot: States struggle to vet coders of election software". Politico.
  6. ↑ Appel, Andrew (2023-02-17). "Unrecoverable Election Screwup in Williamson County TX". Freedom to Tinker. Retrieved 2023-02-17.
  7. ↑ "Maryland Election Glitches Prompt Investigation". Fox News. 2006-09-13. Retrieved 2009-12-22.
  8. ↑ Human, Katy (2006-11-16). ""Shocking" election omission". The Denver Post . Retrieved 2009-12-22.


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