Electronic Voting Machine UI leads to voter fraud
Eight Clay County, Kentucky election officials were charged last week with conspiring to alter ballots cast on electronic voting machines in several recent elections. …
The Kentucky officials are accused of taking advantage of a somewhat confusing aspect of the way the iVotronic interface was implemented. In particular, the behavior (as described in the indictment) of the version of the iVotronic used in Clay County apparently differs a bit from the behavior described in ES&S’s standard instruction sheet for voters [pdf - see page 2]. A flash-based iVotronic demo available from ES&S here shows the same procedure, with the VOTE button as the last step. But evidently there’s another version of the iVotronic interface in which pressing the VOTE button is only the second to last step. So the iVotronic VOTE button doesn’t necessarily work the way a voter who read the standard instructions might expect it to.
The indictment describes a conspiracy to exploit this ambiguity in the iVotronic user interface by having pollworkers systematically (and incorrectly) tell voters that pressing the VOTE button is the last step. When a misled voter would leave the machine with the extra “confirm vote” screen still displayed, a pollworker would quietly “correct” the not-yet-finalized ballot before casting it.
from:
http://www.crypto.com/blog/vote_fraud_in_kentucky/
It remains to be seen if there was intentional wrongdoing, but looking at the demos I see quite a few disconnects between the hardware and software affordances. That is of course, if the demo is accurate to the actual device. The takeaway is that one should use standard conventions used in modern touch kiosk systems where green means go/ok/enter, is at the bottom right of the page, and the interaction stays within the one mode (e.g. touch on the screen).
Notice the RED button, the YELLOW navigation arrows, and the GREEN buttons on the outer frame.
Not shown here, but there is a lengthy onscreen instruction page, two voting pages with standard checkboxes to place your votes, the confirm screen.
During the ‘final’ voting stage there is a flashing RED button on top of the frame and outside of the interface, a flashing GREEN button on screen, and then another GREEN button on the bottom of the frame.
The RED vote button looks like an indicator light (“alarm activated!”), and is not part of the touch screen experience. The greeen ‘vote’ button is getting close, but is above the items I am supposed to read and confirm. Then there is the green outer frame button on the bottom, but no idea what that does.
<sigh> I think it’s time to take this one back into the shop for a look-see…