The Not so Simple Act of Voting: An Examination of VoterErrors with Electronic Voting.

Electronic voting systems offer the promise of faster and more accurate voting, but the current reality is that few of the systems have been independently tested for voter usability issues. This study reports on a large-scale field experiment in which we investigated the usability of six voting systems representing a variety of interfaces (optical scan, touch screen, buttons and dials, membrane buttons) and other characteristics (including portion of ballot visible, advancing mechanism, paper trail). The subject pool included demographic variation and over-represented the elderly and others who were inexperienced with computers. The ballot included a variety of tasks required of voters (including voting in partisan and non-partisan races and in offices with more than one winner, casting a write-in vote, and making a change). The findings demonstrate that these systems are viewed favorably, though with substantial variations across machine characteristics and tasks required. They are also more or less challenging for different types of voters. Our results suggest numerous possibilities for improvements in electronic voting systems as well as suggest the need for continued usability testing. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]