The 2008 U.S. Presidential Election came and went with without the significant controversy that has historically surrounded electronic voting machine kiosks, according to some who represent the kiosk industry.
"There were no major issues at all for Sequoia, its customers or the voting technology industry as a whole on Election Day," said Michelle Shafer, vice president of communications and external affairs for Sequoia Voting Systems and chairwoman for the Election Technology Council, an industry association for companies that manufacture electronic voting machines. "It was a relatively smooth day, especially with the high turnout, the large number of new voters and the unprecedented scrutiny and media attention that this historic election received."
Despite this, Shafer admits that the number of direct recording electronic voting systems – voting machine kiosks that tabulate votes electronically without the voter completing them on paper – is down, with most counties opting for an optical scan voting system instead.
Optical scan voting systems require the voter to mark their votes on paper before running that paper through an optical scan machine that is able to read and register the voter’s choices.
According to VerifiedVoting.org, 3,013 voting jurisdictions out of 4,698 used optical scan voting systems. The remaining jurisdictions used a variety of voting methods including electronic kiosks.
Shafer estimates that, out of all of the voting technology Sequoia has deployed, 65 percent is made up of direct recording electronic voting systems and 35 percent is made up of optical scan machines.
Pamela Smith, a spokeswoman for the public advocacy group VerifiedVoting.org, says counties prefer optical scan systems over voting machine kiosks because they leave a paper trail that is easier to verify in the event that a recount is necessary.
"I think a lot of times people compare this type of voting to using an ATM type of kiosk ... or some other automated process like going to get your boarding pass at the airport from a check in kiosk," Smith said. "But the problem is that voting is different."
Smith said her organization does not rank the quality of individual voting machine kiosk models or manufacturers, but she did offer some suggestions for improvement. She said the iVotronic, manufactured by Election Systems & Software Inc., experienced some calibration problems – the touchscreens sometimes had trouble identifying the candidate voters wanted to select. At the same time, Smith said the printers on the iVotronic – used by poll workers to print out the final tabulations at the end of the day – experienced fewer paper jams than other models.
She said that eSlate kiosks, manufactured by Harp Enterprises Inc., utilized a unique rotary system that enabled voters to electronically select the candidate they wanted.
"Some people reported finding it difficult to control or manage that kind of rotary dial selection, but they particularly noted some problems with straight party ticket voting in that system in Texas," she said. "It just kind of varied from one to another in terms of what kinds of reports we saw."
Click below to see video comments from a random sample of voters who used the eSlate kiosks on Election Day.
