Voting Machines: Make Your Vote Count!

Reported September 2006

ASHBURN, Va. (Ivanhoe Broadcast News) -- Does your vote really count? The topic of a reliable voting system has sparked some heated debates. Now, new electronic voting machines are unveiled, tested and graded.

"We know that there are problems when people try to use voting machines," says Bill Killam, a human factors engineer at Ashburn, Virginia-based User Centered Design, Inc. "In some cases, people cast votes they didn't intend."

Many outdated paper ballots are being replaced by new, electronic voting machines ... But there are many different systems, each with a unique design, set of instructions, buttons -- and problems. Now, human-factors engineers like Killam, along with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) have developed a rigorous, standardized test for all machines.

Killam says, "In the United States there are a number of vendors who produce voting machines, and so one of the questions is, 'If there's multiple designs, how does each one perform in the same test?'"

The NIST test has people evaluate how easy a voting machine is to use. Then, its accuracy and overall performance are rated. The information is then compiled to see how each machine measures up. Forty states now require machines to pass the NIST test before being used in an election.

"The real goal of this whole effort is to make sure that these machines work as people expect them to and that we're not producing machines for the marketplace that cause problems," Killam says.

Experts estimate about a 5 percent error rate in some machines currently in use, but as the ballot becomes more complicated and more names are added, it's likely to be much higher than that.

Results from previously tested voting machines are pending approval from the government before they can be released to the public.

Click here to Go Inside This Science or contact:

Bill Killam, President
User-Centered Design, Inc.
Ashburn, VA 20147
(703) 729-0998
bkillam@user-centereddesign.com

Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
Santa Monica, CA 90406
(310) 394-1811
http://www.hfes.org

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