Voter rights and the barriers to voter registration in USA

It is undeniable that while the United States is not the largest democracy in the world, it is one of the most influential. What happens in America has a profound impact all across the globe. And this is why next year's presidential election is so important.

With Barack Obama currently serving his second term as the President of the United States, he is no longer eligible for re-election. Even so, as a Democrat and as an American citizen, he has a vested interest in how the election turns out. More to the point, the President recently published a guest article on Medium discussing the current voter ID laws in the country and how they are hindering the expression of the true American will.

“The right to vote is one of the most fundamental rights of any democracy,” he states before reminding readers that this year marks the 50^th anniversary of the singing of the Voting Rights Act - the act that broke down legal barriers and made it easier for African Americans and other minorities to cast a ballot.

However, while all American citizens do have the legal right to vote in the United States, not all have had equal access it. The President points out that there are “still too many barriers to the vote” even today, particularly among minorities.

As President Obama decries, the current “provisions specifically designed to make it harder for some people to vote,” like the restrictive photo ID requirements. His Republican opponents say that these voter ID laws help to reduce or eliminate voter fraud, but the President view these laws as unnecessary barriers that prevent the proper expression of a true democracy.

Because the current requirements can vary so widely from state to state, progress will be difficult and the move toward nationalized standards may be a better option. The first step toward greater voter turnout, which would result in a more representative government, is to get as many eligible voters registered in the first place. This could be aided by the expansion of electronic voter registration, a proposal that is gaining more support each day. An additional option is to link the electronic voter registration to driver's licences for a simpler and more automatic solution.

Looking ahead to the 2016 election, Presidential hopeful Hillary Clinton has also spoken out against the restrictive voter ID laws in many states and she continues to be a champion for equal voting rights for all eligible voters. By removing these restrictive barriers and erecting more accessible electronic voter registration systems, more citizens who are current disenfranchised can exercise their democratic right more freely.

For the minorities and other groups who feel like they're being left behind, politics can feel like an “us against them” scenario where they are powerless to elicit change. That cannot and should not be the case. All eligible voters can and should have a voice in how their country is run. And it starts with voter registration.

Reviewing the 2015 UK General Election

The general election in the United Kingdom wrapped up early last month with Prime Minister David Cameron being selected for another term and the Conservative Party earning a majority in the Commons with 331 total seats. This was a shock to many political pundits and analysts, but more relevant to the context of this blog, much can be said about the continuing development and implementation of electronic voting technology in the 2015 UK election.

Leading up to the general election, there was much discussion about the future of elections in the United Kingdom particularly in terms of the adoption of electronic voter registration, electronic voting and even Internet voting. This continues to spark an ongoing debate about modernizing the democracy and bringing it up to the 21^st century. It has been said that the more widespread use of technology in the democratic process would encourage greater citizen participation, particularly among the younger demographic. Recommendations have included the implementation of a two-step verification process for voter authentication and the creation of a central voting website.

But these are looking ahead to the future with an optimistic outlook of implementation in time for the 2020 General Election. What actually happened with the 2015 General Election? The United Kingdom has made significant strides, particularly when it came to an online system for voter registration. A last-minute rush saw nearly 470,000 people register online in just a 24 hour period, breaking the all-time record.

Despite progress in enabling the people of the United Kingdom to add their names to the official voter roll via the Internet, such progress was not witnessed to the same extent in other areas of modernizing the British election.

For Britons who are currently living abroad, the process for casting a ballot is frustrating and time-intensive. It takes so long, in fact, that many such individuals could not participate in the 2015 General Election because their postal ballots did not arrive in time. This is despite registering as much as two months in advance for individuals living as nearby as the Czech Republic or Spain. “Large number of citizens abroad,” said expat voting rights blogger Brian Cave, “have not received any ballot papers for the election.”

A secure online voting system with proper voter authentication could have overcome this major problem.

Even when voting in person, the UK electoral infrastructure faced significant challenges. Some polling stations had to turn away many voters who indeed had their polling cards but were not showing up in the electoral roll due to IT glitches. The voting systems need to have the proper audits and checks in place so that such errors simply do not occur. An electronic polling station connected to the central database could have rectified such issues.

Another fatal flaw of traditional paper ballot-based voting is the increased likelihood for spoilt ballots. This was precisely the case in the recent UK elections as an estimated 27,500 ballots were rejected, mostly because these voters ticked more than one candidate. Because of the secret ballot, the voters whose ballots were rejected were never informed that their vote would not count. This “voter confusion” could be avoided with a well-designed direct-recording electronic voting machine, as the software would be configured to accept only the correct number of inputs from the voter.

Looking ahead to the next General Election in a few years, the electoral officials in the United Kingdom still have a lot of work to do. Thankfully, they have some time to work out these problems and to start developing and implementing better, more modern solutions for casting a ballot. Internet voting, which 63% of those polled by YouGov stated would boost voter turnout, should be seriously considered. The UK would also benefit from better systems for the electoral roll, as well as the move toward offering direct-recording electronic voting machines in lieu of paper ballots. Democracy can only work when the infrastructure is working at its best.

The advancing innovations and trends of voting technology

All industries and business sectors should aspire for continuous innovation, ceaselessly moving forward with changes that make for a better product or experience by all. In the case of mobile phones, the rise of the smartphone and mobile apps has completely revolutionized the way that people communicate on the go. Modern cars are packed with an increasing assortment of technology, providing drivers and passengers with more comfort, better safety and improved fuel economy.

In the context of elections, the pace of innovation can sometimes feel slowed by the bureaucracies of government, but this should not thwart the continuing advances in creating a better and more efficient voting process. This should include innovations for the election infrastructure, hardware and software for collecting ballots, and advances in the tabulation and reporting of results.

Traditionally, innovations that impact how the voter casts a ballot tend to create friction as they have direct require legal framework adaptations. As a rule of thumb, the closer the technology is to the voter, the harder it is to implement it. 

 

That is why, some of the innovations being implemented in the industry address problems either before the voter casts a ballot, or after when the vote is being processed. To better illustrate our point, let’s look at three recent elections that employed technology in different stages. 

Voter authentication

Biometric technology can help to protect against election fraud, giving voters greater confidence in the integrity and legitimacy of results. In Brazil, approximately 21 million voters where authenticated biometrically before casting a ballot, thus eliminating the possibility of voter impersonation. Authorities are expecting to extend the use of the biometric devices to the entire electorate by 2017. 

Electronic poll books 

Among the many recommendations made by the Presidential Commission on Election Administration electronic poll books emerged as one source of possible innovation in the field. The report, handed to the President of the US on January 1st, 2014, sees e-poll books as a way for jurisdictions to make voter processing at polling places more accurate and efficient. The report stated “In the national survey of election of­ficials, e-poll books was one of the most frequently identified innovations that respon­dents desired.”

The Onondaga County Board of Elections recently tried a new electronic poll book during the recent midterm elections in the US. Using an electronic pad similar to what it is used to pay with credit cards at grocery stores, polling management got much easier. 

According to Onondaga County Elections Commissioners, Dustin Czarny, and Helen Kiggins Walsh voters at three polling places were asked to sign their names on the electronic pad. Also, elections inspectors typed voters' names into a database, to pull up information.

Promising to end long lines at polling stations, an election technology provider, everyone counts is also promoting their Electronic Polling Book in their website. 

Results processing

Oonce voters have left the precincts, there are still plenty of instances where administrators can use some help from technology. 

Recently, the West Heath Ward by-election of the Rushmoor Borough Council in the United Kingdom, used a digital pen to streamline the transmission of results. The digital pen, adapted to elections by Smartmatic, was employed in two aspects of the West Heath by-election. It was used by the election officials during the official tabulation and reporting of the election results. More specifically, it was used by officials with the ballot box verification form and the election results verification form. The former aggregates the final tally in each box, while the latter records the results for each electoral candidate. In both cases, the ePen was able to digitally capture the important information, allowing election officials to quickly and easily verify and transmit the results. 

A serious look at audits of e-voting equipment

Source: Google Images

Citizens want to believe that the practices in place for electing officials into government office are fair and true. After all, what is the point of having a democracy if a voting system can be easily tampered and hacked by outside forces, completely skewing the results of elections? To this end, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration recently recommended in its January 2014 report that “audits of voting equipment must be conducted after each election, as part of a comprehensive audit program, and that data concerning machine performance must be publicly disclosed in a common data format.”

As more and more jurisdictions begin to adopt electronic voting machines, particularly direct-recording electronic (DRE) voting machines that may or may not have a voter-verifiable paper trail for audits, it is becoming a big concern for those seeking more transparency in election administration. The audit trail for the ballots themselves is of great importance, as it provides a means of checking election results in the case of a recount, but there's more to this conundrum.

Indeed, we've seen how electoral audits in the United States are good, but they're not perfect. The Presidential Commission on Election Administration particularly encourages the use of post-election audits to check on the performance of voting technology. The Commission recommends that the election administrations in the various districts audit the voting machines after each election to “ensure both that the vote totals match the votes cast and that any problems related to machinery are reported and resolved.” However, this may be only part of the solution.

If a problem with the voting machines was discovered during the post-election audit, what could they do to rectify the situation? If the security of the voting infrastructure was compromised, what can do then? Instead, a better approach would be the inclusion of pre-electoral audits to ensure the performance and security of the voting apparatus. This way, as post-election audits can detect fraud after it has already happened, pre-election audits can prevent them from happening in the first place.

This approach is gaining steam around the world. Venezuela, a nation that has automated its entire electoral process, took this exact approach, performing a robust set of pre-election audits leading up to the actual voting day. The audits inspected the voting machine during its configuration phase, for instance, as well as the e-voting software, the electoral infrastructure, the biometric authentication system used to verify the identity of voters, the data transmission network, the tallying of the ballots, and the closure of the election, among other aspects. This comprehensive check throughout the election stages helped to provide the transparency citizens need.

The US Presidential Commission did not go into that level of detail with its recommendation, but it does indicate the importance of performing different types of audits for different functions. It endorses the need to audit the ballots cast to ensure the correct result is reported, but also the importance of auditing the performance of the voting technology itself.

The results of the pre- and post-election audits must also be publicized and open to public scrutiny. This would allow other jurisdictions to learn from the problems experienced by other districts, encouraging a more secure, more reliable, more problem-free and more robust voting system for all.

Electronic voting makes it into TED

Mr. Bismark during his talk. Photo: TED

Since 1990 TED has held conferences in different cities of the United States to address an array of topics related to Technology, Entertainment and Design. Using a rather informal setting, guest speakers present ideas and demonstrate their expertise in presentations lasting 18 minutes at most. 

In July, 2010, David Bismark attended TED to present a system he designed along with some colleagues, to guarantee transparent and verifiable elections. According to Bismark, the problem his e-voting system addresses is the difficulty each voter encounters to know that his/her vote was recorded accurately and that it actually counted correctly, while remaining anonymous. 

This new system relies on the use of a Precinct Count Optical Scanner machine to capture the intention of the voter. What is innovative about it is the design and particularities of the printed ballot it uses. Voters receive a ballot in which candidates are on the left side, and the ovals/square to mark the preference and a 2D encryption bar are on the right side. Once the voter marks his option, he/she proceeds to tear the ballot through the middle. The right part of the ballot, where options are marked, is scanned and then returned to the voter to keep as a registry of the vote. Now, not all ballots are the same. Candidates are randomly organized in the left side of the ballots, so once the ballot is divided into two separate pieces, nobody can tell for which candidate the marked vote is related to.

Although the system is quite inventive, it does not address many of the issues that are important in a electronic voting system. From the moment the voter arrives to the precinct, to the moment results are announced, an election involves 7 main steps: Authentication of the voter, activation of the voting session, voting, counting of the votes, results collection, consolidation and proclamation. 

During Bismark's presentation, he failed to mention any special mechanisms to address security in the results collection, consolidation and proclamation processes. If in fact, his system has solved security issues in those steps, the authentication and session activation are still manual processes prompt to suffer human error, be it involuntary or intentional.

Also, by utilizing PCOS, the voter cannot be completely sure the vote was properly accounted for. As opposed to machines that directly record the vote, a scanner works as an interpreter. Interpreters open the possibility for error. 

One last inconvenience we see in this system is the fact that ballot printing is one of the most onerous costs for electoral commissions. Printing different models of ballots so that the right side of the ballot cannot be associated to any candidate, once separated into two, represents a heavy burden for the finances of the elections commissions.

Voter biometric authentication - From Ghana to Venezuela

A Ghanian voter going through the
biometric verification process (Photo:UK in Ghana Flickr)

Although in this blog we promote the adoption of voting technologies as a mean to enhance efficiency and transparency, we understand the fact that having appropriate technology is not enough to guarantee success in election administration. A trouble-free implementation of the technology is paramount to achieve legitimate results. Also, the technology to be used on election day needs to be properly audited and tested, and mechanisms to solve unforeseen problems need to be developed. 

Two drastically different experiences serve to illustrate this point: the Venezuelan presidential elections held in October 7, and the December 7 elections in Ghana. 

In Venezuela, and for the first time in the history of elections, biometric devices were used to authenticate 100% of the voters. The elections ran smoothly, voting ended on time, and the results were published only two hours after polls closed. Opposition leaders conceded the defeat immediately. The very few problems encountered by voters on election day were solved according to a well designed contingency plan.

On the other hand, on December 7, Ghana headed back to the polls for the tenth election since democracy was reestablished in 1992. Although Ghana took an important step to increase electoral efficiency and transparency by automating this part of the electoral cycle, a poor implementation of the biometric system led to important setbacks that forced officials to extend voting for an extra day. According to the Coalition of Domestic Election Observers, 18% of polling stations across Ghana had some kind of problem with the biometric devices. In those regions were problems were reported, 33% of polling stations had difficulties. An inconvenience of this magnitude gave all the right to the opposition parties that lost the elections to complain, and served as basis to support their fraud claims. Political instability followed the elections, and post electoral violence erupted in certain cities. 

A few facts explain the different outcomes that biometric authentication had of in these two countries. In first place, the Venezuelan electoral commission was executing its eleventh automated election. The experienced gathered in eight years alongside Smartmatic, helped enormously. For Ghana, this was the first automation in their short democratic history.

Another determining factor was the fact that the Venezuelan platform was thoroughly revised prior to Election Day. More than 22 audits, tests and pilots were carried out in order to guarantee that the system worked properly. Technicians from all parties involved participated. In Ghana, the biometric platform was not sufficiently revised and that is one of the main arguments used  by opposition parties to explain the fraud allegedly committed. 

Also, in Venezuela, automation covered the entire election, from end-to-end, whereas in Ghana only the authentication relies on technology. Opposition parties claiming fraud in Ghana had little or no records to sustain their allegations. Authorities must ensure to build trust in the platform by allowing everyone to audit and review the system. Ghana and Venezuela are two good examples of what to do, and what not to do when it comes to automation.