electionline Weekly

In Focus This Week

Former elections office IT director introduces new voting system
Paper ballot and digital-pen technology ‘way ahead of its time’

By M. Mindy Moretti
electionline.org

If anyone had asked Chris Wilson while he was working in the Franklin County, Ohio elections office if they should get into the business of creating new voting technology, he would have told them they were crazy.

“If someone had come to me with an idea, I would have told them to run and hide and don’t waste your time because it’s such an uphill battle,” Wilson said. “But I think I know the landscape a bit.”

And it’s that inside knowledge of how elections work — in addition to Franklin County, Wilson also worked in elections offices in Florida and is currently an elections technology consultant — that Wilson and his partner Steve Hilsman hope to use to promote their new voting system that combines paper ballots and digital-pen technology.

“I didn’t set out to come up with something new. The whole thing started by accident really,” Wilson said. “It took me a while to put two and two together.”

The two and two that Wilson put together was combining digital paper with a digital pen and using it as a balloting system.

Wilson explains on his Web site, how the voting system would work. The system uses digital paper that contains thousands of tiny dots which can be read by a digital pen. The pen writes in ink and also knows where it is on the paper. The pen contains a small sensor that records the locations. After writing on the paper, the pen is placed in a cradle and the data is downloaded to an application. For voting, the pen knows if a circle or box has been checked in or filled in, much like optical scan. However, it is possible to show an image of the ballot on a computer screen so a voter may review their ballot and make changes before submitting it.

“It’s very similar to optical-scan, but it allows you to make corrections without having to worry about erase marks or smudges, or requesting a new ballot,” Wilson said. “The interesting thing about our system is that it’s the exact opposite of DRE. We vote on paper, but verify electronically.”

After working with a Massachusetts-based digital pen company to perfect his idea, Wilson knew he needed to test the system. But an unconventional idea needed an unconventional test-run so Wilson loaded up sample ballots and digital pens and hit several Columbus-area cafes and taverns where he had patrons give it a whirl.

“It was amazing how accurate it was,” Wilson said of his preliminary tests. “It reads the write-ins too.”

Wilson toyed with the notion of keeping his new idea to himself but figured it was better to go on the offensive with his project so he did a few live demonstrations this summer before elections officials and vendors

“There was pretty much stunned silence in the room,” Wilson said. “People just didn’t believe it. But for the most part it was very, very well received. Although so many of them told us that we are way ahead of our time with the technology.”

Aaron Ockerman, a lobbyist for the Ohio Association of Election Officials saw a demonstration of the system at a small conference for election officials in Ohio and was impressed.

“I was kind of flabbergasted,” he told the Columbus Business Journal. “It seems almost too good to be true. It has every element you look for in a voting system.”

Although Wilson was unaware of it until he began doing research on his idea, the use of digital pen technology in elections is not completely new. Hamburg, Germany has used the technology in municipal elections as has a small town in Scotland.

Wilson noted that the technology can also be used for voter registration and electronic pollbooks, which is where he and Hilsman will be focusing their immediate attention because technologies used in electronic pollbooks and voter registration don’t require the same rigorous state and federal certification processes that voting systems do.

“Certification has been written around the existing technology so it often uses language that precludes new technologies,” Wilson said. “It really does give the upper-hand to the big, existing companies.”

But still despite what he considers an uphill battle, Wilson is willing to forge on with his new system.

“Our goal right now is to continue to look for investment and keep working on our trials and some of these other technologies,” Wilson said. “I wish it was super fast. I’m not in this to make money, and if I’m just one day known as the guy who introduced digital pen voting, well then I’m okay with that.”

Election Reform News This Week

The Alameda County, Calif. Board of Supervisors unanimously decided this week to create and Election Advisory Committee. Dave MacDonald, county registrar, told The Daily Review that the nine-member board will ensure communication between his office, the board and county voters. The committee will give input on issues such as instant-runoff voting and poll worker recruitment. The group will also be in charge of setting up public sessions with the registrar to discuss the latest developments in election law, equipment and procedures used in the county. “For years we’ve had an informal committee that has met and talked about these issued,” McDonald told the paper. “This just makes that process more formal.

An election judge in Illinois was sentenced to two years probation after it was discovered that he was a convicted sex offender who had worked in a school polling place for the 2006 and 2007 election cycles. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, a registered sex offender is prohibited from being present inside a school unless they are there for a conference or to vote. A voter recognized the election judge from an e-mail identifying sex offenders and reported him to police. The Cook County Board of Elections said it has compared its list of judges to the Illinois sex offender registry and found nine more matches. The board said it has referred those cases to the state’s attorney and election judges will be screened in the future.

People can be very passionate about their polling places and nowhere was that more in evidence this week when the elections board of Shickshinny borough in Pennsylvania resigned en masse after being told by the Luzerne County Board of Elections that the polling place would be moved from the fire station to an elderly housing unit. According to the Luzerne County Reporter, Leonard Piazza, director of the Luzerne County Election Bureau, said he had asked county officials to switch the borough’s polling place from the fire hall to the Shickshinny Towers elderly housing facility because of complaints, particularly from elderly voters, who found it difficult getting to the fire hall. However, the paper reported that the board members had complained in November 2006 that they could no longer use the facility because of cramped spacing prompting the move to the fire hall. Piazza told the paper that a larger room has been discovered at the facility, thus the desire to move the polling place back. The paper reported that Piazza has since rounded up other residents who are willing to serve on the borough election board as judge of elections, inspectors, clerk, machine operator and constable.

Voters in Cary made history on Tuesday when they used instant-runoff voting (IRV) for the first time ever in the state of North Carolina. According to a local television station, the use of IRV in Cary was a test program approved last year by the state legislature. Although there was a lot of publicity prior to election day, volunteers were stationed at each polling place to explain the process to anyone who had questions.“You had to do more research because you had to have a backup in case your person didn’t win so it took a little bit longer but it was well worth it in the end,” voter Brad Freeman told the station. His opinion and others were collected in an exit survey. The results will be presented to the State Board of Elections later this year.