10 November 2008

Optical scan vote counting machines are far from perfect

Provisional ballots cast in Flathead County — approximately 400 — will be counted this afternoon. As I noted in my previous post, the probability that provisional ballots will reverse the outcome of the 911/OES bond election is vanishingly small. The odds are also against a reversal in House District 8 (Kalispell), where Democrat Cheryl Steenson leads incumbent Republican Craig Witte by 22 votes.

There is, however, one variable that could have an impact on the outcome of a very close election that goes to a recount: the accuracy of the vote counting machine.

Flathead County uses optical scanning technology. Voters blacken an oval on the ballot, which is then fed into the scanner. If all goes well, the scanner recognizes the blackened oval and adds one vote to the total for that candidate or position on an issue. Elections officials like the technology because it speeds the counting and reduces the number of employees needed.

But optical scanning technology is not error free. There are a number of ways a vote can fail to be recorded, or worse, recorded for the wrong candidate or position on an issue:

Electrical failures in the counting machine can suppress a signal or generate a bogus signal.
Ovals not blackened within the tolerances of the machine might not be recorded.
Programming mistakes can add votes to the wrong tally, or subtract votes from the right tally, or both.
Malicious programming — fraud — can add votes to the wrong tally, or subtract votes from the right tally, or both.
Ballots on which the intent of the voter is clear, but on which the ovals are not blackened — check marks, circles around names, underlined names, etc. — will not be counted. These ballots should be flagged as under-votes and hand inspected, but whether they are depends on policy and programming.

The optical scanning error rate for properly marked ballots is low, on the order of a percent or less, but it exists and could affect the outcome of a close election. Therefore, in some states, Arizona and California for example, the accuracy of optical scanning vote counting devices is audited following the election by hand counting several precincts chosen at random. Montana does not require post counting audits, but it should.

These problems are why Minnesota will hand count the ballots in the Senate race between incumbent Republican Norm Coleman and Democratic challenger Al Franken. Humans eyeballing the ballots can and will spot and resolve problems that the scanners miss or handle incorrectly. Minnesota, a state with a reputation for relatively clean and progressive politics, recently clarified its statutes on recounts so that a hand count is mandatory.

Florida, a state with a reputation for rather dirty politics, takes a different approach. After the debacle in the 2000 Presidential election, Florida’s legislature actually passed a law requiring that ballots counted first by machine must be recounted by machine. How that was thought to protect democracy escapes the nation's best minds.