EAC - Voluntary Voting System Guidelines

Name : | Ann Pimley
Organization : | N/A
Post Date : | 9/28/2005
Section Comments
Section : | 2.2.7.2
Page no. : |
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Comment : | There should be a summary of what the voter voted for at the end of the ballot. Visual ballots show this. The audible ballot should do so as well. The voter should not have to scroll up from one contest to the next, through the whole ballot to check their ballot. That is time consuming and not equal to the visual ballot. On a machine we used, the machine skipped a contest. Unless you had a summary at the bottom to let you know how you voted, or didn’t vote, in every contest, some people may not have been aware of the fact they missed some contest. Voters also need to be told how to vote in a certain contest if the screen skipped it and they cast their ballot, so they are not disenfranchised. The audio ballot needs something to tell the voter what step they are on. A voter may become temporarily distracted, with such things as dropping something, a child that needs tending, some occurrence from another voter, etc. The visual voter will have something on the screen to tell them what step they are at. With the touch screen or other audio ballots there is no such function. The help touch pad will tell you what the functions are, but not what step you are on. Since there is no text on the screen, a poll worker can’t help you. There are only two choices. One take a guess on what step you were at, and push a touch pad. Hopefully, if you press the wrong touch pad you can correct the mistake. The other option that an election official suggested to me, was to cancel the whole ballot, and start over. This is a waste of time and effort for the voter. One option is to have an optional button to show the regular screen, so the poll worker can let the voter know what step they are on. This would be used only when the voter didn’t know what step they were on. Another option is a separate function key, that would tell you what step you just completed. If there is a function area that says to go back, is that just for one step, or to go back to the previous contest?