Heuristic-Driven Recommendations for Improving U.S. Voting

Author(s):  
Thomas M. Gable ◽  
Dar-Wei Chen ◽  
Cale M. Darling ◽  
Sean A. McGlynn ◽  
Sadaf Kazi ◽  
...  

Human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) can play a role in improving equal opportunity in U.S. voting through the redesign of inefficient voting processes that lead to low voter turnout. This article, which derives from the authors’ winning entry in the HFES 2014 “Voting Systems of Tomorrow” competition, outlines HF/E-driven recommendations for improving the American voting process. These recommendations include a “one-stop shop” for all voting-related information, personalized voter accounts, appointment systems, and several ballot design suggestions. Implementation of these recommendations, on any level, has the potential to improve the proficiency of polling places, lower all-too-common lengthy wait times, and ensure that ballots are accessible to all voters.

2021 ◽  
Vol Volume 33 - 2020 - Special... ◽  
Author(s):  
Léonie Tamo Mamtio ◽  
Gilbert Tindo

Electronic voting systems have become a powerful technology for the improvement of democracy by reducing the cost of elections, increasing voter turnout and even allowing voters to directly check the entire electoral process. End-to-end (E2E) verifiability has been widely identified as a critical property for the adoption of such voting systems for electoral procedures. Moreover, one of the pillars of any vote, apart from the secret of the vote and the integrity of the result, lies in the transparency of the process, the possibility for the voters "to understand the underlying system" without resorting to the competences techniques. The end-to-end verifiable electronic voting systems proposed in the literature do not always guarantee it because they require additional configuration hypotheses, for example the existence of a trusted third party as a random source or the existence of a random beacon. Hence, building a reliable verifiable end-to-end voting system offering confidentiality and integrity remains an open research problem. In this work, we are presenting a new verifiable end-to-end electronic voting system requiring only the existence of a coherent voting board, fault-tolerant, which stores all election-related information and allows any party as well as voters to read and verify the entire election process. The property of our system is information guaranteed given the existence of the bulletin board, the involvement of the voters and the political parties in the process. This involvement does not compromise the confidentiality nor integrity of the elections and does not require cryptographic operations on the voters account. Les systèmes de vote électronique sont devenus une technologie puissante pour amé-liorer la démocratie en réduisant le coût des élections, en augmentant la participation des électeurs et en permettant même aux électeurs de vérifier directement l'ensemble de la procédure électorale. Cependant, la vérification de bout en bout (E2E) a été largement identifiée comme une propriété critique pour l'adoption de tels systèmes de vote en réel pour des procédures électorales. Par ailleurs, l'un des piliers de tout scrutin, outre le secret du vote et l'intégrité du résultat, réside dans la trans-parence du processus, la possibilité pour les électeurs "de comprendre le système sous-jacent" sans avoir recours aux compétences techniques. Les systèmes de vote électronique vérifiables de bout en bout proposés dans la littérature ne le garantissent pas toujours car ils nécessitent des hypothèses de configuration supplémentaires par exemple l'existence d'un tiers de confiance comme source de hasard, l'existence d'une balise aléatoire. Ainsi, construire un système de vote vérifiable de bout en bout fiable offrant la confidentialité et l'intégrité reste un problème de recherche ouvert. Dans ce tra-vail, nous présentons un nouveau système de vote électronique vérifiable de bout en bout nécessitant uniquement l'existence d'un babillard de vote cohérent, tolérant aux pannes, qui stocke toutes les in-formations relatives aux élections et permet à tout parti ainsi qu'aux électeurs de lire et vérifier le processus d'élection complet. La propriété de vérification de bout en bout de notre système est une information garantie compte tenu de l'existence du babillard, de l'implication des électeurs et des par-tis politique dans le processus. Cette implication ne compromet ni la confidentialité ni l'intégrité des élections et ne nécessite pas d'opérations cryptographiques pour le compte de l'électeur.


2018 ◽  
Vol 60 (2) ◽  
pp. 41-60 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rodrigo Schneider ◽  
Kelly N. Senters

AbstractScholars concur that free and fair elections are essential for proper democratic functioning, but our understanding of the political effects of democratic voting systems is incomplete. This article mitigates the gap by exploiting the gradual transformation of voting systems and ballot structures in Brazil’s 1998 executive elections to study the relationship between voting systems and viable and nonviable candidates’ vote shares, using regression discontinuity design. It finds that the introduction of electronic voting concentrated vote shares among viable candidates and thus exhibited electoral bias. We posit that this result occurred because viable candidates were better able to communicate the information that electronic voters needed to cast valid ballots than were their nonviable counterparts. The article uses survey data to demonstrate that electronic voters responded to changes in ballot design and internalized the information viable candidates made available to them.


Author(s):  
Elsa Estevez ◽  
Pablo Fillottrani ◽  
Tomasz Janowski ◽  
Adegboyega Ojo

Information sharing (IS) is a key capability required for one-stop and networked government, responding to a variety of intra-organizational, inter-organizational, or cross-national needs like sharing service-related information between parties involved in the delivery of seamless services, sharing information on available resources to enable whole-of-government response to emergencies, etc. Despite its importance, the IS capability is not common for governments due to various technical, organizational, cultural, and other barriers which are generally difficult to address by individual agencies. However, developing such capabilities is a challenging task which requires government-wide coordination, explicit policies and strategies, and concrete implementation frameworks. At the same time, reconciling existing theoretical frameworks with the IS practice can be difficult due to the differences in conceptions and abstraction levels. In order to address such difficulties, this chapter proposes a conceptual framework to guide the development of Government Information Sharing (GIS) policies, strategies, and implementations. By integrating theoretical frameworks and the GIS practice, the framework adopts a holistic view on the GIS problem, highlights the main areas for policy intervention, and provides policy makers and government managers with conceptual clarity on the GIS problem.


2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 169-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Romano ◽  
Ottavia Aresu ◽  
Maria Assunta Manniello ◽  
Barbara Parodi

Common Access to Biological Resources and Information (CABRI) service is a ‘one-stop-shop’ for materials that are collected by a number of European culture collections that engage themselves in a quality service for the scientific community by adhering to Quality Guidelines for the management of resources and related information. It includes collections' catalogues that can be searched in an SRS implementation. A simple search facility, including a synonym search and a shopping cart, is also available. Within the European Biological Resource Centres Network (EBRCN) project, an extension and improvement of the catalogues' information is under way. This includes adding links to bibliographic databanks and sequence databases. Revision of ‘in-house’ controlled vocabularies used by data annotators is under way, in order to improve the setting up of external links, and new links to biochemical pathways databases are being set up for some of the catalogues.


2016 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 9
Author(s):  
Pamela Campbell ◽  
Katrina Stierholz

Election-related information covers a broad range of topics—voter registration, voter turnout, opinion polls, election results, and campaign finance data—spanning national, state, and local levels. Who collects and provides all the data related to an election? Interestingly, many sources of election statistics are available online through private institutions (e.g., universities, research institutions) rather than government sources. This applies to both recent information and historical information.This article focuses on just a few of the many resources for election data. Three sources are briefly examined, followed by an in-depth look at one source: the American National Election Studies (ANES). These sources cover a broad range of subject matter and delivery methods. The Library of Congress offers other resources at its election statistics Web Guide (www.loc.gov/rr/program/bib/elections/statistics.html).


Author(s):  
Philip Kortum ◽  
Robert Stein ◽  
Claudia Ziegler Acemyan ◽  
Dan S. Wallach ◽  
Elizabeth Vann

Objective To describe user-centered voting systems that would support the safe conduct of voting in a pandemic environment. Background The COVID-19 pandemic has complicated our democratic processes. Voters and poll workers feel threatened by the potential dangers of voting in business-as-usual polling stations. Indeed, significant problems were encountered in the recent 2020 primary elections in Wisconsin, where the National Guard had to be mobilized because so few poll workers reported to work, and more than 90% of polling places had to remain closed. Method We describe a number of possible user-centered solutions that would help protect voters and poll workers in times of pandemic, and also report the results of a survey that asked voters and poll workers about what kinds of systems might make them willing to vote. Results Political as well as safety considerations will need to be considered as these safer voting solutions are designed since, surprisingly, the kinds of solutions preferred depend on the political affiliation of the voters. Conclusion Human factors professionals have a large role to play in realizing the safe, successful implementation of these user-centered systems. Good human factors analysis can help minimize the risk to voters and poll workers. Moreover, human factors methods can help safeguard democracy by creating safe and well-engineered environments that are conducive to voting in the age of pandemics. Application Creating safe and effective voting solutions that protect voters and poll workers during pandemic outbreaks is crucial to the preservation of democracy.


1978 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
pp. 831-847 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven J. Brams ◽  
Peter C. Fishburn

Approval voting is a method of voting in which voters can vote for (“approve of”) as many candidates as they wish in an election. This article analyzes properties of this method and compares it with other single-ballot nonranked voting systems. Among the theorems proved is that approval voting is the most sincere and most strategyproof of all such voting systems; in addition, it is the only system that ensures the choice of a Condorcet majority candidate if the preferences of voters are dichotomous. Its probable empirical effects would be to (1) increase voter turnout, (2) increase the likelihood of a majority winner in plurality contests and thereby both obviate the need for runoff elections and reinforce the legitimacy of first-ballot outcomes, and (3) help centrist candidates, without at the same time denying voters the opportunity to express their support for more extremist candidates. The latter effect's institutional impact may be to weaken the two-party system yet preserve middle-of-the-road public policies of which most voters approve.


Sensors ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (17) ◽  
pp. 5874
Author(s):  
Uzma Jafar ◽  
Mohd Juzaiddin Ab Aziz ◽  
Zarina Shukur

Online voting is a trend that is gaining momentum in modern society. It has great potential to decrease organizational costs and increase voter turnout. It eliminates the need to print ballot papers or open polling stations—voters can vote from wherever there is an Internet connection. Despite these benefits, online voting solutions are viewed with a great deal of caution because they introduce new threats. A single vulnerability can lead to large-scale manipulations of votes. Electronic voting systems must be legitimate, accurate, safe, and convenient when used for elections. Nonetheless, adoption may be limited by potential problems associated with electronic voting systems. Blockchain technology came into the ground to overcome these issues and offers decentralized nodes for electronic voting and is used to produce electronic voting systems mainly because of their end-to-end verification advantages. This technology is a beautiful replacement for traditional electronic voting solutions with distributed, non-repudiation, and security protection characteristics. The following article gives an overview of electronic voting systems based on blockchain technology. The main goal of this analysis was to examine the current status of blockchain-based voting research and online voting systems and any related difficulties to predict future developments. This study provides a conceptual description of the intended blockchain-based electronic voting application and an introduction to the fundamental structure and characteristics of the blockchain in connection to electronic voting. As a consequence of this study, it was discovered that blockchain systems may help solve some of the issues that now plague election systems. On the other hand, the most often mentioned issues in blockchain applications are privacy protection and transaction speed. For a sustainable blockchain-based electronic voting system, the security of remote participation must be viable, and for scalability, transaction speed must be addressed. Due to these concerns, it was determined that the existing frameworks need to be improved to be utilized in voting systems.


2021 ◽  
pp. 113-127
Author(s):  
Charles E. Phelps ◽  
Guru Madhavan

This chapter takes a new look at different voting methods, asking not how they work but rather how well they let voters express themselves. The most widely used method in the world (“choose one candidate”) is by far the worst at allowing voters to express themselves. This type of ballot has the vocabulary span of a six-month-old infant. Widely used rank-order ballots are modestly better (about the vocabulary of a two-year-old child) but are still very weak as communication devices. New forms of voting, including range voting and majority judgment (where voters grade the choices), offer vastly more ways for voters to express their true sentiments about the choices offered to them. This chapter also assesses how well voters are likely to understand exactly how voting systems work, possibly affecting their trust of the process.


2014 ◽  
Vol 38 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 277-290
Author(s):  
Daniel C. Reed

This research reevaluates the effect of the Australian ballot reforms of the late nineteenth century on voter mobilization and turnout, challenging the “vote market hypothesis” regarding voter bribery by political parties. We propose that any subsequent declines in turnout were more directly affected by ballot design than by voter secrecy. In a regression analysis of voter turnout in statewide gubernatorial elections from 1870 to 1910, we find a significant decline in turnout in those states implementing “office bloc” reform ballots. However, the use of “party column” reform ballots did not lead to a decline in turnout. The results suggest that secrecy in voting does not fully explain the national turnout decline observed after passage.


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