Electronic Voting, Spring 2020

Saltman's chapter on Election 2000

Unlike many, Roy Saltman avoids getting too distracted by the hanging chad on Votomatic ballots, but sees the debacle in Florida as a comedy of errors, with widespread problems in non-Votomatic counties. He also points out problems on the fringes. Absentee overseas ballots, for example, make up a tiny fraction of all ballots counted. In a close race with a margin of a small fraction of a percent, small irregularities out on the fringe can make a big difference.

The US Commission on Civil Rights

This report is from some of the first hearings after the election trying to understand what had happened. Testimony included numerous issues outside the context of this course, but the discussions of disability access and the machinery of elections paint a good picture of where we stood in that election.

Human Factors in Voting Technology

First, an apology -- I don't want to pull a Gilderoy Lockhart and make you read everything I've written and then quiz you on my favorite color, but this little work illustrates how the data from Florida 2000 can be considered to be a natural experiment from which we can learn the consequences of small differences in voting systems from one county to another. In this case, I looked at optical scan ballots from something like 40 Florida counties.