As Americans prepare to cast their ballots in the 2008national elections, there are growing calls for improvements to the votingprocess. In recent years, important U.S. elections have been plagued byelectronic voting machine failures and other problems. That's why in thepresidential and congressional elections on Nov. 4, more than half of allvoters will use paper ballots read by optical scanning machines.
Many voters and election experts question whether, withouta paper trail to verify one's vote, electronic voting machines can ever betrusted.But that could change with anew vote counting system that might help restore voters' confidence that theirballots are being accurately counted.
,an assistant professor of computer science at George Washington University,understands why people are frustrated with the process of voting. She says onceballots are cast, voters must have faith that their vote is recorded.
"Essentially, that is all you can do unless you are aprivileged polling official or somebody who can come close to the scanner andballot boxes and ensure that [the votes] are counted correctly," she says.
Vora says voters want a way to check independent ofpolling officials and machines. Working with researchers from a half-dozenuniversities in North America and Europe, Vora helped develop a new votecounting system.
Called ,it works with the optical scanning devices already in common use. Much likethey are accustomed, voters are given a paper ballot and asked to mark it. Theonly difference is the pen they use has special ink, which reveals hiddencodes. Before leaving the polling station, the voter would copy those codes ona detachable receipt at the bottom of the ballot.The codes could then be confirmed online.
Vora says Scantegrity would make election fraud moredifficult.
"The machine would be caught [in a discrepancy]between voters and Web site numbers if your confirmation code is incorrectlyrecorded on the Web site," she says.
With the proof, voters would then step in and challengethe system.
"It helps detect that there really was an error orthere wasn't," Vora says.
Team member and George Washington University graduatestudent Stefan Popoveniuc says invisible ink and encrypted codes aside, themagic of Scantegrity is that it empowers voters to take a greater role in thedemocratic process.
"We really want the public [to] check each and everypromise that the election officials make about running the elections correctly,and we can do that if we have enough data," he says.
Scantegrity is ready for use in elections. Since it hasbeen designed to be used with optical scanners, increased costs would beminimal.According to Scantegrityresearchers, although election districts would still have to pay for equipmentand supplies, the first to adopt the system will get it royalty-free for alifetime.
The system will get a workout on Election Day when morethan 1,200 foreign students on the George Washington University campus casttheir ballots in a mock presidential election using the Scantegrity votecounting system.
