This is just a quick post regarding one technical problem we had voting in Montana this year. This diary is
not about fraud, but about a different way one of the large electronic voting system vendors may potentially have disenfranchised a certain number of voters.
Last week I wrote an account of my day as a pollworker in Bozeman, MT, in which I mentioned a difficulty we had with "light printing" of the ovals on our ballots. To save you the trouble of referring to the old diary, here is the relevant section:
The ballots came with a note from our county clerk, warning us of a potential problem. The printing was too light, and, while the names and races were perfectly legible, the fine-lined ovals to fill in were barely visible. A person with good vision could complete the ballot under optimal lighting conditions. Others-- mostly, but not all, elderly-- would, as the day wore on, come out of the booth with a questioning look: it literally appeared to them as though there were no ovals there at all. The note from the clerk suggested that such voters be directed to the "Automark" machines, which are capable of reading ballots aloud to voters and marking them automatically according to choices on a keypad. However, very few elderly voters were comfortable using this new technology, and most opted for a magnifying glass or penlight.
At the time I wrote the above, I was unaware that the near-invisibility of these ovals was in fact part of the deliberate design of the optical scan system. Today, however, an article, by staff writer Dave Richardson, appeared in the Bozeman Chronicle explaining the source of the problem, and noting the many complaints that had been received.
If you had to squint to see exactly where you were supposed to mark your ballot in this month's election, you weren't alone.
Gallatin County election officials said they fielded more than 100 formal complaints about the faint little ovals voters were required to fill in on the Nov. 7 ballot.
Even more voters grumbled off the record.
The problems stemmed from technical issues surrounding electronic votecounting machines supplied to the state by Election Systems & Software of Omaha, Neb. The company is one of the largest suppliers of electronic voting systems.[...]
The machines electronically count votes marked on ballots, which are then tallied by a central computer. Darker outlined ovals can lead to miscounted votes, Greenwood [the Montana secretary of state's communications director] said.
"These types of machines have to have (the ovals) be lighter, and that makes them harder to see," Greenwood said.
Gallatin County clerk and recorder Shelley Vance said she was "very disappointed with the product that was delivered by ES&S."
Vance said the county ballot -- a new design being used for the first time here -- was delivered by ES&S as an electronic document that could not be altered by local printers, even though it was obvious the faint ovals would present a problem.
Clearly, having our voting systems entirely under the control of a handful of large companies, unable to be corrected by local elections officials, is an unacceptable situation. But we knew that. For a whole host of reasons.
In this particular case, those disadvantaged are obviously the elderly, who are far more likely to have mild forms of visual impairment. Whether age is correlated with particular voting patterns isn't really the point of this diary; from the perspective of an election worker, I am dismayed by the prospect of any voter being deterred from voting, or from voting accurately, simply due to easily-preventable technical problems. I had imagined, naively, that because Montana still uses paper ballots we were not subject to the difficulties imposed by electronic-voting companies such as ES&S and the infamous Diebold. I was quite wrong.
I would be interested to hear from anyone, from Montana or elsewhere in the country, who experienced similar problems in this election. How widespread was this invisible-oval phenomenon? Why is it suddenly claimed to be an inevitable byproduct of an optical-scan system, when it previously was not? How did it affect local precincts? Please share any technical knowledge or anecdotes you may have.