Voting Machine For Disabled Could Provide Audit Feature

By W. David Gardner, TechWeb.com 22 September 2004

As the nation's election officials struggle with problematic electronic voting machines, a new ballot-marking system initially designed for disabled voters could help solve a crucial problem the lack of an auditable paper trail.

Unveiled Wednesday by Vogue Election Products and Services, the AutoMARK ballot-marking system features touch-screen voting that operates in tandem with optical scanners. "We're actually getting a lot of interest to use the AutoMARK for all voters and not just for disabled people," said sales manager Rob Resuali in an interview.

The system has been perfected in the firm's research unit, but it won't be ready in time for use in the November national elections. Resuali said the AutoMARK will be tested in the field in November in Maricopa County, Ariz., where it will run in parallel with existing election equipment. The AutoMARK has also been successfully tested by the Michigan Commission for The Blind, he added.

Resuali said the AutoMARK terminal has been designed to meet the requirements established by the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. The legislation was established after the voting fiascoes of the 2000 election. Since then, voting-machine manufacturers have struggled to perfect voting machines and bring them up to meet the HAVE requirements. One particularly onerous and heretofore unsolvable problem has been the inability of most voting machines to provide for reliable audit trails, required in elections when recounts are called for.

"The optically scanned ballot is retained" after a voter has voted, said Resuali. "Because it's retained, the vote can always be recounted by hand if necessary."

With the AutoMARK system, voters most of them blind or otherwise disabled a standard optically scanned ballot into a slot on an AutoMARK terminal. Election races are displayed and magnified on a screen, and voters use the touch screen to make a ion. Blind voters use headphones, and different languages can be accommodated. The AutoMARK then prints the ions on the ballot and the voter casts the ballot in the normal manner.

As for auditing, the paper ballots generated by the system can be audited in the same way hand-marked ballots are counted.

The system can also accommodate voters who want to write in a choice. Using the touch-screen keyboard, voters can spell out their choices. A system of audio prompts enables blind voters to write-in their choices.

Resuali said the company expects the system will be HAVA-compliant and ready for the 2006 elections.