BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to electronic voting systems and, more particularly, to the means of selecting and recording votes in a manner that minimizes or eliminates the need for reprogramming of the electronic equipment prior to each election and will, after selections have been made, produce a voter verifiable printed record of the selections made.
2. Description of the Prior Art
This invention relates in general to electronic voting systems and more specifically to a voting system that provides for the printing of customized ballots at the time a voter casts his or her ballot.
The presidential election of 2000 illustrated the hazards of punch card ballots and the uncertainty of verifying voter intent. Indeed, since punch card ballots are not easily read by voters, there were many voters who subsequently felt disenfranchised based on the fear that their intended vote was not accurately recorded.
This national controversy revealed that there is the need for a method to cast ballots that is (1) easy for humans to read, so that both voters and election officials can verify the accuracy of the cast vote, (2) easy for machines to read for the purpose of automating the count, and (3) provides for multiple paths of verification. In addition, the ideal voting system must be inexpensive, easy to prepare for each election, and easy to setup at voting locations.
At one time, “Votomatic” punch cards were the nation's most commonly used means for recording voter's selections. Following the presidential election of 2000, however, this method of voting has become disfavored. There is a major drive in some quarters to move toward computer aided touch screen voting and adoption of “direct recording electronic” (DRE) voting systems.
The problem with electronic voting systems is that many people worry about the risk of a conspiracy to change, or misreport votes within the “black box” of the electronic voting system. Therefore, as described in related patent application Ser. No. 10/013,277, DRE systems should be augmented with the simultaneous printing of a voter verified paper record. While DRE systems are extremely useful for generating immediate results at the end of the voting day, a voter verified paper record that can also be read by election officials, or scanned, following the election, provides a mechanism to ensure that the reported electronic tally matches the tally that can be subsequently generated using the voter verified paper records.
Another difficulty with DRE systems, and especially touch screen voting systems, is that such a system requires at least a modest level of reprogramming with each election to change the names of candidates, number of candidates in each race, and other skip criteria. Any reprogramming at all, however, requires that election officials must retest the equipment and examine the software to ensure that there are no “back-doors” being added which provide a means of election fraud. In addition, as the present invention shows, touch screens are unnecessarily expensive input devices for collecting an electronic record of votes.
The present invention, teaches a more cost effective techniques for inputting voter's selections that minimizes or eliminates the need for reprogramming, thereby reducing the costs of setting up and verifying equipment and increasing voters' confidence in the election process.
Glossary
The following glossary of technical terms used repeatedly throughout this disclosure will be of substantial benefit for the reader to understand the invention:
Ballot refers to the list of voting options presented to a voter.
Ballot map refers to the mapping of each ballot-specific voting option to one the fixed range of input codes.
Input codes refer to the predetermined, finite number of input options, or “fixed input codes,” that can be recognized by the electronic input device used to make voting selections. The input codes are not specific to a particular election or ballot but are instead reusable for an unlimited number of elections since each code may be associated with the different voting options unique for each election.
Intermediary paper record is a printed record identifying the voters selections in an encrypted form such that the voter's selections are not readily readable by the voter and election officials but must be interpreted by a device that produces the human readable paper record.
Paper record is the printed record identifying the voter's selections in an unambiguous form that is readable by the voter and election officials. The word “paper” is used to describe the preferred substrate for printing a tangible record of the voter's selections, but is not meant to exclude the use of other materials, such as plastic substrates, that would serve an equivalent function.
Selections or voting selections refer to the voting options selected by the voter.
Voting options include all possible options on a ballot. This can include candidate's names grouped under a contested office, “yes” or “no” in regard to propositions, and other options such as “write in,” “void all selections,” or any other option that may be useful.
Vote casting unit refers to an electronic device which accumulates an electronic tally of the selected votes after the voter has verified the accuracy of the printed record of the selected voting options. The functions of the vote casting unit may be integrated into the vote selection device, or in some embodiments, separated from the vote selection device.
Vote selection device refers to the electronic device which allows the voter to make selections from the ballot.
It was in light of the foregoing that the present invention was conceived and has now been reduced to practice.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention describes multiple ways for creating a voter verified printed record of votes cast by each voter during an election. The printed record normally includes only the names of the candidates for whom the voter has voted in a form that is easily readable by both humans and machine. This unambiguous printed ballot makes it easy for voters to verify the accuracy of their intended vote and can subsequently be used to cast the voter's official vote or saved to provide an audit trail for subsequent confirmation of an electronic tally of the votes that is created at the time voting options are selected or cast.
Moreover, the invention provides techniques to minimize or eliminate the need for reprogramming of the electronic equipment prior to each election by using one or more fixed range inputs that are electronically mapped to voting options available for each election. By restricting the vote selection device to be permanently responsive to a fixed range of input codes, the reprogramming of the vote selection device for each election may be minimized or eliminated. Restricting the programming in this way precludes any opportunity for tampering of the election equipment's programming. Instead of reprogramming the device prior to each election, election officials need only to create a ballot map that represents the assignment of each available voting option to one of the fixed input codes. For example, to mimic the familiar “Votomatic” system, booklets would be printed with each voting option corresponding to a “punch hole” associated with each of the fixed input codes Instead of punching a card, however, placing the input wand into the selected hole would trigger an electronic response that would include (1) sensible feedback to the voter that the selection was identified, for example, with a audible buzz or light flash, or both, and (2) an electronic recording of the vote. The process is then completed by printing a human readable paper record that allows the voter to verify that the electronically recorded vote corresponds to the voter's intent.
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