The Cost of Accurate Voting 

If such a system were available in 2000, it’s possible that those Democratic elderly voters in Palm Beach County may have been able to correct their mistakes when they inadvertently punched a hole by Pat Buchanan’s name instead of by Al Gore. 

Months prior to the election, organizations such as Miami-Dade Elections Reforms, the American Civil Liberties Union and even the Democratic Party questioned every aspect of the controversial iVotronic machines. In Miami-Dade County, this scrutiny led to the largest electronic ballot test in history when, for nearly 24 hours, officials performed 4,016 test ballots on 212 machines. Even after the test there were still questions: Will the flash cards retain the information? What if the machines fail to turn on? How accurate is the information? Should there not be a receipt?

What wasn’t factored: How much longer it would take for people to vote using electronic ballots?

Disney World-like lines dominated many polling places during the regular election and virtually every early voting site throughout this county, and many people were forced to wait between two and three hours. Clearly the extraordinary high voter turnout during this presidential election had a lot to do with the long waits. But there is more to it than that… it simply takes longer to vote using an electronic ballot.

And, with the iVotronic touch screens machines at least, a lot of it has to do with giving the voter a chance to make sure they know who they voted for and, perhaps, give them a chance to change his or her mind.

Think back. Using the old punch-card ballot system there was no way to recall a vote after inserting that needle into that hole. But under the iVotronic system a voter can review his/her choices and if a mistake is made – or if the voter changes his or her mind – that voter can change the decision and review it again.

If such a system were available in 2000, it’s possible that those Democratic elderly voters in Palm Beach County may have been able to correct their mistakes when they inadvertently punched a hole by Pat Buchanan’s name instead of by Al Gore. But when you have a huge ballot like the one many county and state voters were presented with this year, it won’t take just five minutes for a person to leave the polling booth – no matter how astute on the issues he or she is.

This is not to say that iVotronic is perfect. For one thing, the company that developed iVotronic, ES&S, arguably experimented during the September 2002 election with shaky out-of-date technology, resulting in the machines taking surprisingly long periods of times to boot up and causing precincts in Dade and Broward counties to open up several hours late. And in spite of the improvements made to the screens of late, elections officials are still afraid to simply turn the iVotronics on just before the election. As a result, the iVotronics are left on the night before the election.

Still, voters are now given the opportunity to review their choices – and perhaps change their minds. In elections with high voter turnouts, this means a longer voting process. Is there a way to improve this? Perhaps, but it shouldn’t be made at the cost of giving voters a chance to review their voters. Who knows? Longer voting times might just be the cost of making sure the vote you cast is truly the “right” one.