The Problem

• The election process lost 4 to 6 million presidential votes in 2000.

• An estimated 1.5 million presidential votes were not recorded in 2000 because of difficulties using voting equipment.

• Up to 3.5 million Senate and governor votes were lost because of technology over the last election cycle for these offices

• According to the US Census Bureau, in the 2000 election, 7.4 percent of registered voters who did not vote (approximately 3 million) reported that trouble with their registration was the main reason they did not vote

• According to the US Census Bureau, in the 2000 election 2.8 percent of registered voters who did not vote (approximately 1 million) reported that long lines, inconvenient hours, or polling place locations were the main reason they did not vote

Equipment

• There are five types of voting equipment: hand-counted paper, mechanical lever machines, punch card ballots, optically scanned paper, and electronic voting machines.

• Hand-counted and optically scanned paper have had the lowest rates of unmarked, uncounted, and spoiled ballots in presidential, Senate and governor elections over the last 12 years.

• Punch cards have the highest rate of unmarked, uncounted, and spoiled ballots over the last four presidential elections.

• Lever machines have the highest rate of unmarked, uncounted, and spoiled ballots in Senate and governor elections over the last 12 years.

• Electronic machines have the second highest rate of unmarked, uncounted and spoiled ballots in presidential, Senate, and governor elections over the last 12 years.

Voter Registration

• Voter registration is a large system to manage: There are about 150 million voter registrations in the United States.

• Counties maintain voter registration in almost all states.

• There are a large number of duplicate registrations. Michigan found 1 million duplicate registrations throughout the state when that state created a unified statewide registration system.

Absentee Voting

• Two decades ago, five percent of all ballots were cast absentee or early. 

• In 2000, fourteen percent of all ballots were cast absentee or early.

Cost

• Counties and municipalities pay for election administration, including for state and federal elections.

• Total county election expenditures in 2000 were an estimated $1 billion, or about $10 per voter for the year.

• Costs are split roughly equally into one-third for voter registration, one-third for election office operations, and one third for equipment and polling place operations (combined).

• Over a fifteen to twenty year span, the cost of acquiring and operating either an optically scanned ballot system or an electronic voting system is approximately the same, about $2 per voter per year.

RECOMMENDATIONS

The United States can improve the rate of lost votes immediately.

• Optical scanning has the best track record of all equipment types currently in use. We recommend replacing punch cards, lever machines, and older electronic machines with optical scanned ballot systems, or any electronic voting system proven to perform similarly well in extensive field tests. This would cost approximately $2 per voter, or $200 million, per year (over a fifteen to twenty year span). 

• Before Election Day, voter registration presents counties with an enormous database management problem. We recommend that states develop Qualified Voter Files and Systems.

• It is cumbersome to provide paper lists of all county voter registrations to all polling places. Lease laptops for each polling place with access to all county or state voter registration information. This would cost approximately $2 per voter per year.

• Problems with voter registration can be a barrier to voting and can create lines at polling places. We recommend aggressive use of "provisional ballots" to take care of such problems.

• Integrity of absentee balloting is a real concern. We recommend use of early voting instead of absentee voting on demand.

• Remote Internet voting poses serious security risks. We recommend a delay on Internet voting until suitable criteria for security are in place.

Electronic voting will change how we vote in the near future. To capture the full potential of electronic voting, a substantial change in the development and evaluation of equipment is required. The federal government should develop a coherent national approach to the development of this technology.

• A standard equipment platform must be develop to guarantee that voters can verify their votes and that voters can create a copy of their votes that can be used in the event of a recount (full auditability). We recommend that this platform consist of modular voting equipment, which allows for the separate development of equipment for generating votes and of equipment for casting and for counting votes. This will allow for development of very secure equipment for casting and counting votes and for continual improvement in the ballot and interface design.

• We must build to the best of breed in other sorts of electronic technology.

The federal government must establish and fund an election technology research program for the development of equipment. The program will focus on ballot and interface design, on security, and on handicap accessibility.

• The federal government must create and fund a system for evaluating equipment, based on lab and field testing of equipment. This will be more efficient than the current system, which, at its best, relies on demonstration projects run by the firms that develop and sell equipment. 

• New standards must be developed focusing on appropriate standards for security, human usability, and handicap accessibility. These standards must evolve, based on the lessons learned through the research and evaluation program.

• Many election officers know little about voting systems used elsewhere in the country. The federal government should fund a clearinghouse for information about election equipment, election administration costs, and voter registration and polling place practices. This clearinghouse will act as a sort of "Consumer Reports" for counties.

The Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project came into being while the ballot battles of the 2000 presidential election were still being fought in Florida. The California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology saw a need for strong academic guidance in this intersection of technology with democracy. As the presidents of these two Institutes, we are proud to have mobilized a team of computer scientists, human factors engineers, mechanical engineers, and social scientists to respond to this national need. We are extremely grateful to the Carnegie Corporation of New York for responding so quickly to our request for support for this project.

The Voting Technology Project team began its research with a desire to evaluate existing voting technologies to determine whether they meet the country’s needs for a secure, reliable, robust system of recording election preferences. The team also saw a need to understand how machine performance and reliability fit into the larger picture of election administration.

Caltech and MIT researchers collected data from around the country and met with leading election officials, researchers, and industry representatives. We are grateful to everyone who contributed wisdom and data to our this research effort.

It is evident that problems with counting the votes of the citizens of Florida and elsewhere originated in unsound technology.

In the last election, Americans learned that at the heart of their democratic process, their "can-do" spirit has "make-do" technology as its central element. For many years, we have "made do" with a this deeply flawed system, but we now know how poorly these systems function. Until every effort has been made to insure that each vote will be counted, we will have legitimate concerns about embarking on another presidential election.

This report presents the findings of the first six months of research by the Project team. While six months is hardly a sufficient amount of time to solve such a core question of American democracy, the report does provide recommendations both for concrete improvements, which could be made before the next election, and for guidance in setting the direction of future technological innovation. We strongly urge all U.S. officials with a role in the voting process—including members of Congress—to act on the findings of this dispassionate group of technologists and social scientists.

                      David Baltimore                                                Charles M. Vest
                          President                                                            President
                 California Institute of Technology         Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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