With the presidential election less than 10 months away, a statistically significant portion of voters may accidentally vote for the wrong candidate on electronic voting machines because they find the displays confusing, according to results of a five-year study conducted by three universities.
The study, conducted by the universities of Maryland, Rochester and Michigan, found that 3 percent of people voting electronically selected a candidate they did not intend to choose. While much of the attention to electronic voting machines has been on the security issues involving the machines' software and how the systems are stored during elections, the study's authors emphasized that poor user interfaces -- the way candidates' names and ballot initiatives are displayed to voters -- pose a much greater risk of skewing elections.
"Recent history is clear: the election problem most likely to tilt a close race is not security, but the inability of voters to cast their ballots the way they intended," said Paul Herrnson, principal investigator and the director of the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University at Maryland. "The hazards of poor ballot design didn't end with Florida's hanging, pregnant and dimpled chads in 2000. Those people walked away not confident and not trusting the vote."
The study's authors said the 3 percent error rate is enough to affect the outcome of close elections, which have occurred more frequently in the past decade. "A 3 percent error rate sounds good until you consider that in the 2000 presidential race, the percentage of uncounted ballots was only 2 percent," Herrnson said. "Voters did pretty well with these machines. ... But it's still enough to affect the outcome of a close election."
The researchers tested five current electronic voting systems and one prototype. These included a paper ballot with optical scanner (manufactured by Electronic Systems and Software); a manual advance touch-screen, which allows voters to control when the next ballot appears (Diebold AccuVote-TS); an auto advance touch-screen with paper trail (Avante Voting Systems); a dial and buttons interface (Hart InterCivic); a full-face ballot with membrane buttons, which are flat, springless buttons (Nedap Election Systems); and a zoomable touch-screen prototype designed by Benjamin Bederson at the University of Maryland.
 
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