EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Ian S. Piper
Organization : | Diebold Election Systems, Inc.
Post Date : | 9/29/2005
Section Comments
Section : | 6.8.3.2
Page no. : | 40
Line no.: | 13
Comment : | As with printing any ballot (optical scan or audit trail) in an alternative language, the privacy of an ethnic group can be compromised. Although an individual voter's privacy can be maintained, how a particular ethnic group using an alternative language has voted could be determined through a post-election review of the audit trails or paper ballots. If that information is compiled and used, it would be akin to profiling. It should be understood that although having the alternative language on printed matter containing voting selections allows the individual voter to more easily understand that his/her choices have been properly recorded, ethnic privacy can be compromised through the compilation of such data. Optical scan paper ballots and manually counted paper ballots can be used to compile voting trends of ethnic groups and those voters using accessibility devices. DRE units, without VVPAT, maintain ethnic privacy while still allowing the individual voter to use an alternative language or accessibility feature. However, with the addition of paper, there are compromises to ethnic privacy that have to be understood. Proposed change: Add a requirement that states "Information shall not be compiled for the purposes of establishing the voting selection trends of voters using alternative language or accessibility features." A discussion item can be included below this requirement that states "This requirement is applicable to voting systems and the procedures of election officials, however, it is not meant to exclude the compilation of information establishing how many times an alternative language or accessibility feature was used."