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Re: Paper stock and possible voting error with optical scanners

Title: Paper stock and possible voting error with optical scanner
Charles - You are right.  The FEC Standards do not specify the paper for an optical scan system.  This due to the fact that the vendors use varioius types of readers so paper that might be fine on one system may not work on another.  This is handled by the vendors specifying the type(s) of paper that must be used on their system.  Then the ITAs qualify the system using the paper the vendor specifies.  These specifications are then contained in the vendors documentation and in the ITA reports.  Jurisdictions using the system obvioulsy should use the paper specified.  Problems happen when, for whatever reason, they do not.
 
Most of the vendors qualify printers and provides a list of qualified printers to the using jurisdictions.  These vendors only guarantee an election if the juridsiction uses a qualified printer. 
 
The situation you described is entirely possible.  If the paper that was used is too translucent for the system, then the marks on the other side could interfer with the system correctly reading marks on the ballot.
 
If they have some left over blank ballots you can easily determine whether or not this was happening.  The question then is what to do about it.  I do not know how this would be handled in Colorado, but in Georgia the evidence would be turned over to the State Election Board and they would decide the appropriate remedy.  If this indeed happened, I would not be surprised if you wind up reholding the school board race.
 
Best regards.
 
Brit
 
----- Original Message -----
Sent: Saturday, December 06, 2003 3:07 PM
Subject: Paper stock and possible voting error with optical scanners

Stephen, Herb, Brit, et al.,
     During the November elections Al Kolwicz and I were contacted by a candidate in a Denver school board race. She was concerned about the excessive number of undervotes in her race, ~30% compared to 5-7% in the other races.
     While a larger undervote in a school board race isn't unusual in school board races, an investigation turned up some factors that affect the P1583 standards.
     This was a mail election using paper ballots and the ballots were read using a Sequoia optical scanner system using a DOS operating system (DOS OS is the only Sequoia scanner system certified by Colorado at present). The Denver election officials were quite cooperative and allowed us to inspect the actual ballots used, which are generated and printed by Sequoia in California.
     The problems with respect to the standards come in because the paper stock used to print the ballots on was rather more translucent than I expected for an optical scanner. Also, the ballot was printed on two sides. So the first issue is that I don't recall seeing any standards that specify how opaque the paper stock must be for paper ballots.
     Secondly, the Sequoia scanner read the ballot as a mark between a greater than and less than symbol, i.e., >   < is the blank the voter sees, and they indicate their vote by a line between the symbols  >-<   for their candidate of choice.  While we were not able to test the problem for the usual reasons, a potential error arises with translucent paper stock because on the reverse side of the ballot there was a solid line aligned with the candidate we were helping. So looking at a light with a blank ballot in hand one saw ------>-<--------
      We are unable to determine whether this caused the candidate to receive additional votes, or whether undervotes resulted if the voter voted for some other candidate. An undervote might result if the voter marked some other candidate, particularly if the voter drew a very light line between the symbols for their candidate. The scanner might then read both the mark on the front of the ballot and the one on the back of the ballot. As overvotes are automatically rejected, the election tabulation might show many fewer votes in this race than were actually cast.
      In either case the voting equipment standards need to include a test of optical scanners for such malfunctions and specify ballot opacity. As best I can find the draft standards don't consider these issues at present.
                 Chuck Corry
--
Charles E. Corry, Ph.D., F.G.S.A.
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