Library Of Congress Margaret E Wagner Ga Popular Books

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Electronic voting in the United States involves several types of machines: touchscreens for voters to mark choices, scanners to read paper ballots, scanners to verify signatures on envelopes of absentee ballots, and web servers to display tallies to the public. Aside from voting, there are also computer systems to maintain voter registrations and display these electoral rolls to polling place staff. Most election offices handle thousands of ballots, with an average of 17 contests per ballot, so machine-counting can be faster and less expensive than hand-counting. Voluntary guidelines The Election Assistance Commission (EAC) is an independent agency of the United States government which developed the 2005 Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG). These guidelines address some of the security and accessibility needs of elections. The EAC also accredits three test laboratories which manufacturers hire to review their equipment. Based on reports from these laboratories the EAC certifies when voting equipment complies with the voluntary guidelines. Twelve states require EAC certification for machines used in their states. Seventeen states require testing by an EAC-accredited lab, but not certification. Nine states and DC require testing to federal standards, by any lab. Four other states refer to federal standards but make their own decisions. The remaining eight states do not refer to federal standards. Certification takes two years, costs a million dollars, and is needed again for any equipment update, so election machines are a difficult market. A revision to the guidelines, known as the VVSG 1.1, was prepared in 2009 and approved in 2015. Voting machine manufacturers can choose which guidelines they follow. A new version has been written known as the VVSG 2.0 or the VVSG Next Iteration, which is being reviewed. Optical scan counting In an optical scan voting system, each voter's choices are marked on one or more pieces of paper, which then go through a scanner. The scanner creates an electronic image of each ballot, interprets it, creates a tally for each candidate, and usually stores the image for later review. The voter may mark the paper directly, usually in a specific location for each candidate, then mail it or put it in a ballot box. Or the voter may select choices on an electronic screen, which then prints the chosen names, usually with a bar code or QR code summarizing all choices, on a sheet of paper to put in the scanner. This screen and printer is called an electronic ballot marker (EBM) or ballot marking device (BMD), and voters with disabilities can communicate with it by headphones, large buttons, sip and puff, or paddles, if they cannot interact with the screen or paper directly. Typically the ballot marking device does not store or tally votes. The paper it prints is the official ballot, put into a scanning system which counts the barcodes, or the printed names can be hand-counted, as a check on the machines. Most voters do not look at the machine-printed paper to ensure it reflects their choices. When there is a mistake, an experiment found that 81% of registered voters do not report errors to poll workers. No state requires central reporting of errors reported by voters, so the occasional report cannot lead to software correction. Hand-marked paper ballots more clearly have been reviewed by voters, but some places allow correction fluid and tape so ballots can be changed later. Two companies, Hart and Clear Ballot, have scanners which count the printed names, which voters had a chance to check, rather than bar codes and QR codes, which voters are unable to check. When scanners use the bar code or QR code, the candidates are represented in the bar code or QR code as numbers, and the scanner counts those codes, not the names. If a bug or hack makes the numbering system in the ballot marking device different from the numbering system in the scanner, votes will be tallied for the wrong candidates. This numbering mismatch has appeared with direct recording electronic machines (below). Errors in ballot marking devices Ballot marking devices display contests and candidates on a screen where voters can make, change and check selections before printing the choices on paper to put in a ballot box. The election worker provides a code for each voter, to tell the machine what contests that voter may vote on. Contests presented to voters depend on the district boundaries they live in. In a 2023 election in Northampton County, PA, misprogramming switched text on paper between two judge retention contests, so a vote to remove or retain the first was labeled with the name of the second, and vice versa. The county briefly changed to hand-marked paper ballots, but ran out, and went back to the mislabeled BMDs. The county and court changed instructions throughout the day. In a 2022 election in Marietta, GA, up to 157 voters were presented lists of contests which were partly in error, due to recent changes in district boundaries. In a 2019 election in Philadelphia, PA, 40% of polling locations had problems with BMDs, including "touchscreens that were hypersensitive or that froze; paper voting receipts getting jammed in the machines; and panels opening on some machines to expose the equipment's electronic controls." In a 2019 election in Northampton County, PA, BMD screens were hypersensitive or insensitive, from being "configured improperly in the factory" so voters had to keep trying to select their candidates. An instructional message was treated as a Republican candidate, so straight party votes omitted the real candidate. Errors in optical scans Some scanners have a row of photo-sensors which the paper ballot passes by, and they record light and dark pixels from the ballot. Other scanners work by scanning the ballot to create an electronic image (i.e. a picture) of the ballot. Then the resulting image (picture) is analyzed by internal software to discern what votes were cast. In these types of vote tabulators, any defect in the scanning apparatus, such as dirt, scratches on the lens, or chads of paper, may mar the image of the ballot. These types of defects may produce long black lines, or white lines in the ballot image, which then may be misread by the software as an undervote (no votes for anyone), or as an overvote (a vote for every candidate). Some offices blow compressed air over the scanners after every 200 ballots to remove dust. Software can miscount or fail to count. If it fails or miscounts drastically enough, people notice and check. Errors can happen in the scanner or at the ballot printer. Staff rarely identify the person who caused an error, and assume it was accidental, not a hack. In a 2022 election in DeKalb County, GA, a candidate who actually won appeared to lose, after votes were not counted for her in some precincts, because another candidate withdrew, and programming did not categorize votes correctly. in a 2022 election in Clack.... Discover the Library Of Congress Margaret E Wagner Ga popular books. Find the top 100 most popular Library Of Congress Margaret E Wagner Ga books.