Lousy Local Conditions II

VOTES LOST BY THE VOTING SYSTEM

Perhaps the most widely publicized problem in the 2000 election was the number of votes that were not counted because of voting system errors (often called “spoiled” or “residual” ballots). As researchers at the California Institute of Technology and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Caltech/MIT) found, “two million ballots, or two percent of the 100 million ballots cast for president in 2000, were not counted because they were unmarked, spoiled, or ambiguous. Of this two percent it is estimated that 0.5 percent did not intend to vote for president, so 1.5 percent (or 1.5 million people) thought they voted for president but their votes were not counted.” As widely re ported in numerous articles and reports, certain technologies seemed consistently to perform better than others, with punch card ballot machines singled out as the worst culprit when it came to lost votes. Studies also showed that more votes were lost in poor and minority jurisdictions, and some reports found that inferior voting systems were disproportionately located in poor and minority jurisdictions.

In the elections analyzed in our reports, Los Angeles and Virginia fared considerably better than New Jersey and New York City with respect to spoiled ballots. Although Los Angeles widely used the notorious punch card ballots, the city initiated an intensive voter education program in the wake of the 2000 experience and succeeded in reducing the number of residual ballots in the 2001 mayoral election to about 1 percent, down from the national average of about 2 percent the previous year. Virginia, which already had an uncounted ballot rate below the national average in 2000, also cut its level in half in 2001, largely by instituting new technology that enabled voters to verify and correct their ballot choices if necessary, even if they used punch card systems. . . .

Thus, the 2001 elections reinforce evidence that the type of voting machinery employed is not necessarily the most significant factor affecting the rate of spoiled ballots. Even the alleged main culprit of the 2000 debacle, punch card ballots, performed well when voter education efforts were undertaken in Los Angeles and when they included technology that allowed a voter to double check and correct his or her vote, as in Virginia. By contrast, only New Jersey replaced punch card machines with little apparent effect. New York City was able to improve the performance of its thirty-eight-year-old lever machines to some extent by investing in poll workers. The success of these efforts, however, does not mean that old machines should be left in place eternally. Evidence suggests that optical scan and Direct Recording Electronic systems (DREs) perform better than other methods when technologies are assessed overall. More advanced technologies generally do produce better results. Moreover, electronic forms of voting have the potential to make it easier for the disabled and citizens who have difficulty reading English to vote. For example, such technology can include ballots in unlimited numbers of languages and facilitate private polling place voting by the blind. The main lesson, though, is that replacement of machinery is not enough; it should be part of a menu of reforms.

(Ronald Hayduk, The 2001 Elections in New York City [pdf 348 KB]. A Century Foundation Report for The National Commission on Federal Election Reform. xi-xiii, emphasis added.)