Yer votin thingamajig sure looks purdy….
Ken
-----Original
Message-----
From:
owner-support@dieboldes.com [mailto:owner-support@dieboldes.com] On Behalf Of Nel Finberg
Sent: Friday, December 13,
2002 3:00
PM
To: support@dieboldes.com
Subject: RE:
Maryland
Article
We
should look at what seemed to be overwhelmingly positive response from voters
in Georgia, for example, where the voter base was much larger, Georgia voters
not necessarily being more literate than Maryland
voters.
-----Original Message-----
From:
owner-support@dieboldes.com [mailto:owner-support@dieboldes.com]
On Behalf Of Ken
Sent: December 13, 2002 12:06 PM
To:
support@dieboldes.com
Subject: RE: Maryland Article
I'd like
to hear Sue's take on that as well, but your question is at least partially
answered by the next sentence. "Most of those problems, the study
reported, involved card readers used to activate the machines". I've
always considered the card readers the weakest link in our system,
myself.
I would like to see their data which shows that one-third of
voters not having college education needed assistance from poll workers.
I don't necessarily doubt this, depending on how "assistance" is defined and
what questions the exit pollers asked and how they were asked. It sure
does sound high though. It would be incredibly valuable to know the "top
five" issues the voters needed help with. It would also be interesting
to see comparative stats. For all I know one-third of non-college
graduates require assistance with paper ballot.
Sue, if you can get a
copy of the actual UoM study and post that, it might make an interesting
read. Getting the Washington Post filtered prospective probably doesn't
do the study justice. In particular, most of the reporter's conclusions
regarding the 3% were illogical.
Ken
-----Original
Message-----
From: owner-support@dieboldes.com [mailto:owner-support@dieboldes.com]
On
Behalf Of Steve Knecht
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 11:24 AM
To:
support@dieboldes.com
Subject: RE: Maryland Article
Sue, what does
this 3% number reflect?
-----Original Message-----
From:
owner-support@dieboldes.com [mailto:owner-support@dieboldes.com]On
Behalf
Of Sue Page
Sent: Friday, December 13, 2002 3:10 AM
To:
Support
Subject: Maryland Article
The following article is from
the Washington Post. The article was
printed
in three
different "regional" editions of the paper, and had the following
3
headlines:
Some Voters Flustered by Computers
Computers
Flustered Some Voters, Study Finds
Evaluating The Results Of Bits, Bytes
For Ballots
By Matthew Mosk
Washington Post Staff
Writer
Thursday, December 12, 2002; Page AA03
When the long
lines began to snake out of the polling station in the Montgomery County
senior community of Leisure World, County Council member Steven A. Silverman
wondered if elderly voters were having trouble with the state's new
computerized voting machines.
"There were many people there who told me
they were not computer literate, that they don't even use ATMs," Silverman
(D-At Large) said.
Silverman's hunch now appears to be supported by a
comprehensive study of voters' first brush with computerized voting machines,
used for the first time in four Maryland counties: Montgomery, Prince
George's, Dorchester and Allegany.
Exit polling by University of
Maryland researchers found that one-third of voters who lacked a college
education needed help to use the machines; one-quarter of those who said they
had infrequently used computers sought help with the machines; and about
one-sixth of all voters said they got assistance from election
judges.
"What this signals is that there are real privacy issues that
need to be dealt with when voters are using the computerized machines, and
there are serious usability issues that are extremely important," said Paul
Herrnson, who heads the University of Maryland's Center for American Politics
and Citizenship and was co-director of the study.
The General Assembly
decided last year to overhaul Maryland's voting system in response to the
Florida ballot count that delayed the results of the 2000 presidential
election for weeks.
State budget officials decided to replace outdated
systems in Montgomery, Prince George's, Allegany and Dorchester counties for
this year's elections and to install computerized voting machines statewide by
2006.
The four counties and the state split the $15 million cost of the
new AccuVote-TS system, manufactured by Global/Diebold Election Systems in
Ohio.
Although the machines' inaugural run was relatively smooth in the
other counties, confusion reigned in Montgomery during the September
primaries. Several polling places opened late because the equipment was not
set up. Inaccurate results were posted on the county Web site, while judges
struggled through complicated forms and tabulations.
Instead of sending
results by modem, poll workers had to drive computer disks across the county
to the elections board in Rockville and faced long lines upon arrival. And
nearly 100 machines were delivered whole to the county board by frustrated
poll workers.
The University of Maryland study, however, focused on the
ease of voter use and tried to gauge how voters responded to the new
machines.
In addition to the voters who needed help to fill out their
ballots, the study found that a small percentage of the machines -- about 3
percent
--
malfunctioned in some manner.
Most of those problems,
the study reported, involved card readers used to activate the machines.
Election judges in some precincts addressed the problem by inserting the card
for voters. Some voters also reported trouble navigating from screen to
screen, especially in the "ballot review" section.
Herrnson said that
although 3 percent sounds like a small figure, Florida's 2000 presidential
election debacle was a reminder that perfection should be the goal.
"In
several House races in Maryland, there was voter turnout of 200,000, so in
those cases, 3 percent starts to sound like a pretty big number," he
said.
Herrnson said he witnessed some of the trouble voters were having
when he went to the polls in his hometown of Hyattsville.
"After I
voted, I sat down and watched as people raised their hand while they were
voting to ask for help," he said.
He said the study recently was
submitted to the state Board of Elections for review, and he hopes that as the
machines become more common, the board will devote more time to educating the
public about how to use them.
Margaret Jurgensen, election director for
Montgomery County, said she found the machines to be popular with voters and
was pleased with the initial experience. She said her staff will continue to
emphasize training of poll workers as well as programs to educate voters on
the new machines. "This is the first year this has been deployed," she said.
"There's always going to be a learning curve."
State board officials
could not be reached to comment on the study, but on Election Day last month,
they defended the performance of the new machines, saying that a few glitches
should be expected with a new product.
And in Montgomery County,
although some voters had trouble, the problems were far from
universal.
"It was wonderful, and I'm not even computer literate,"
Winnie Soltz, 62, told a reporter. The Gaithersburg substitute teacher had
just cast her ballot, without any difficulty at
all.
__________
(Note that on election day, we saw the long lines in
Leisure World. We tried in vain to get Montgomery County to deploy 10
more of their 60 "spare"
units to this location. Doing so would
have reduced the long lines,
and
this article may have been
different.
On the flip side - because of lines in some precincts,
Montgomery County will be purchasing additional units - maybe as many as
1,000. Works
for
us!)