Why Touch Screen Voting Machines are a Horrible Solution

[jAZ]

In Arizona we use optical paper ballots (think modern #2 pencil style) for our voting.

I'm watching these huge lines already forming (2 hour waits) in early voting along with seperate and unrelated stories of touch-screen voting having problems working properly.... and I realized there is an engineering problem at play.

Touch screen machines are a terrible solution for voting for a a few reasons, but one huge reason.

First they are expensive. Second they are prone to failure (screen slipage). Third they typically don't leave an audit trail.

Those are the typical reasons people talk about, and to one degree or another, those are true.

The big reason I think they make no sense is scalability.

With touch screens, it's far more expensive to add each extra polling station because you must buy an additional computer terminal for each voting booth (plus the table space and privacy barriers... both are relatively cheap).

With the optical scanner system, you just need more paper ballots (crazy cheap), plus the same table space and privacy walls.

There really is no justification for touch screen voting. It's a horrible system all the way around... and with the high costs, and thus fewer polling spaces... the lines are long and fewer people's votes get counted.

Bad system.

[dirk digler]

I agree. I have been reading some stories all week about votes switching on the touch screens or pushing one button and it chooses one halfway down the screen.

I just hope people are paying attention when they vote so they don't get screwed.

Where I live they use optical paper ballots as well and it works good and it is fast

[jAZ]

I agree. I have been reading some stories all week about votes switching on the touch screens or pushing one button and it chooses one halfway down the screen.

I just hope people are paying attention when they vote so they don't get screwed.

Where I live they use optical paper ballots as well and it works good and it is fast
That's the issue that people are already paying attention to.

But the reason that I started this thread is really about queuing theory.

We have long lines because of bottlenecks inside the voting location. The way you reduce the lines is to have more "servers" (voting booths).

At $500 per voting station vs $0.05 per voting station... it's impossible to provide enough voting stations given tight budgets.

All of the other reasons are important too, but I think this is an indisputable, cost vs value decsion and the decision to use touch screens in high traffic areas is key to long lines. You just can't throw out 10 more voting stations if lines get long.

[dirk digler]

That's the issue that people are already paying attention to.

But the reason that I started this thread is really about queuing theory.

We have long lines because of bottlenecks inside the voting location. The way you reduce the lines is to have more "servers" (voting booths).

At $500 per voting station vs $0.05 per voting station... it's impossible to provide enough voting stations given tight budgets.

All of the other reasons are important too, but I think this is an indisputable, cost vs value decsion and the decision to use touch screens in high traffic areas is key to long lines. You just can't throw out 10 more voting stations if lines get long.

Yep that makes sense. It also doesn't help when the machines are screwing up and you have to ask for help. That just adds to the voting times.

But on the flip side I think it is great that more states are doing early voting and IMHO it should be mandatory across the country.

[triple]

I don't understand them either.

Everyplace I've ever voted has maybe one of them, but otherwise it's #2 pencils filling in the bubbles.

I like the positive feedback of sticking my ballot in the box. At least I know for sure it's in there in the counting room.

[jAZ]

I don't understand them either.

Everyplace I've ever voted has maybe one of them, but otherwise it's #2 pencils filling in the bubbles.

I like the positive feedback of sticking my ballot in the box. At least I know for sure it's in there in the counting room.

The tin-foil in me wonders if Repubilcans are exploiting this by putting them into heavily populated urban areas in swing states. I have no idea if that's true or not, I admit that upfront.