Human Factors Issues with Voting Systems

On Tuesday, Kim Zetter posted at Wired.com about a California Secretary of State report (.pdf) investigating 197 tallied ballots that were lost during the November 4th, 2008 general election in Humboldt County.

In essence, the report states that a “serious software error” in the Diebold Election Systems, Inc. (now dba Premier Election Solutions, Inc.) Global Election Management System (GEMS) version 1.18.19 caused the ballots to be lost.  Specifically, it states:

“The software error silently deletes all tallied votes from the first batch or “deck” of optical scan paper ballots after they have been scanned into GEMS.” (p. 1)

Another reported issue is that the interface design “…permits deletion of certain audit logs that contain – or should contain – records that would be essential to reconstruct operator actions during the vote tally process” (p. 7).  Specifically, the design allows for inadvertent activation of the “Clear” button due to its proximal location to the “Print” and “Save As…” buttons (see screen shot here).  This issue could have easily been identified, and subsequently fixed, by performing usability tests prior to allowing the voting system into the stream of commerce.

The problem of interface design was just one of many issues that were highlighted in a white paper I co-authored last year entitled, The Human Factors of Voting (.pdf).

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