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A DRE voting machine, or direct-recording electronic voting machine, records votes by means of a
ballot A ballot is a device used to cast votes in an election and may be found as a piece of paper or a small ball used in voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16th cent ...
display provided with mechanical or electro-optical components that can be activated by the voter. These are typically buttons or a
touchscreen A touchscreen (or touch screen) is a type of electronic visual display, display that can detect touch input from a user. It consists of both an input device (a touch panel) and an output device (a visual display). The touch panel is typically l ...
; and they process data using a computer program to record voting data and ballot images in memory components. After the election, it produces a tabulation of the voting data stored in a removable memory component and as printed copy. The system may also provide a means for transmitting individual ballots or vote totals to a central location for consolidating and reporting results from precincts at the central location. The device started to be massively used in 1996 in
Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...
where 100% of the elections voting system is carried out using machines. In 2004, 28.9% of the registered voters in the United States used some type of direct recording
electronic voting Electronic voting is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or handle casting and counting ballots including voting time. Depending on the particular implementation, e-voting may use standalone '' electronic voting machines'' (also ...
system, up from 7.7% in 1996.


History

The idea of voting by push button with electrical technology used to total the votes dates back to the 19th century when Frank Wood of Boston was granted a patent on a direct-recording electrical voting machine. (
Thomas Edison Thomas Alva Edison (February11, 1847October18, 1931) was an American inventor and businessman. He developed many devices in fields such as electric power generation, mass communication, sound recording, and motion pictures. These inventions, ...
's electrical voting system patent is sometimes cited in this regard, but it was intended for tallying roll-call votes in legislative chambers; as such, it is more like an
audience response Audience Response is a type of interaction associated with the use of Audience Response systems to facilitate interaction between a presenter and their audience. Systems for co-located audiences combine wireless hardware with presentation softwar ...
system.) The idea of electrical voting was pursued with much more vigor in the 20th century. Numerous patents were filed in the 1960s, many of them by AVM Corporation (the former Automatic Voting Machine Corporation), the company that had a near monopoly on mechanical
voting machine A voting machine is a machine used to record votes in an election without paper. The first voting machines were mechanical but it is increasingly more common to use ''electronic voting machines''. Traditionally, a voting machine has been defi ...
at the time. The first direct-recording electronic voting machine to be used in a government election was the Video Voter. This was developed by the Frank Thornber Company in Chicago. The Video Voter saw its first trial use in 1974 near
Chicago, Illinois Chicago is the List of municipalities in Illinois, most populous city in the U.S. state of Illinois and in the Midwestern United States. With a population of 2,746,388, as of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, it is the List of Unite ...
, and remained in use until 1980. Microvote and Shoup Voting Machine Corporation entered the market in the mid 1980s with the MV-464 and the Shouptronic. Both of these machines saw widespread use; over 11,000 Shouptronic machines had been sold by 1993. In the years that followed, the rights to the Shouptronic were transferred to Guardian Voting and then to Danaher Controls, which sold it as the ELECTronic 1242.


Benefits

DREs prevent
overvote An overvote occurs when one votes for more than the maximum number of selections allowed in a contest. The result is a spoiled vote which is not included in the final tally. One example of an overvote would be voting for two candidates in a singl ...
s and provide immediate feedback to the voter about undervotes. They avoid ballots with ambiguous marks where voter intent can be unclear. Like electronic ballot markers, DREs can be programmed to offer ballots in multiple languages, and they let people with disabilities vote without assistance, which would remove the anonymity of their vote. The machines can use headphones and other adaptive technology to provide accessibility. Additionally, with DRE voting systems there is no risk of exhausting the supply of paper ballots, and they remove the need for printing paper ballots, which cost $0.10 to $0.55 per ballot,Georgia: though some versions print results on thermal paper, which has ongoing costs.


Issues

Skepticism about the integrity of DRE voting machines led to the creation of election forensics, which can help identify
election fraud Electoral fraud, sometimes referred to as election manipulation, voter fraud, or vote rigging, involves illegal interference with the process of an election, either by increasing the vote share of a favored candidate, depressing the vote share o ...
.


Delays in voting

DREs can cause more delay than paper ballots at busy times, since every voter needs access to a machine. Queuing theory calculates that waits of an hour result from known variations in when voters arrive, number of voters per machine, and average time a voter spends with a machine.


Errors

Issues have included public web access to the software, before it is loaded into machines for each election, and programming errors which increment different candidates than voters select.


2009 German court ruling

In 2009, the
Federal Constitutional Court of Germany The Federal Constitutional Court ( ; abbreviated: ) is the supreme court, supreme constitutional court for the Germany, Federal Republic of Germany, established by the constitution or Basic Law for the Federal Republic of Germany, Basic Law ...
found that with voting machines the "determination of the result must be able to be examined by the citizen reliably and without any specialist knowledge of the subject." They further found the DRE-type voting machines, used in parliamentary elections under current German law, permitted voting machines but were unconstitutional without further qualification. The decision does not ban electronic voting but implements a higher standard.


Demonstrated laboratory attacks

* Diebold Election Systems AccuVote-TS (Manipulation of the votes by the
Princeton University Princeton University is a private university, private Ivy League research university in Princeton, New Jersey, United States. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth, New Jersey, Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the List of Colonial ...
) * Nedap ES3B (Manipulation of the votes by a citizen group) * SDU voting computers (Violating the secrecy of the ballot using Van Eck phreaking, tested by the Dutch secret service AIVD) Attacks have also been performed on both DRE machines and optical scan voting machines, which count paper ballots. (See California study, "Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuBasic Interpreter"Security Analysis of the Diebold AccuBasic Interpreter
"). Whether it is a DRE or an optical scan machine, the opportunity for tampering applies to persons with inside access (including government workers) and to a lesser extent, outside hackers. Therefore, framing election tampering issues as "hacking" may not be an accurate framework for public concerns. Within the context of protecting voting rights, it would not matter whether vote alteration was done by an outsider or an insider. What is of most importance is the ability to perform an audit with a record generated and verified by the voter at the time their vote is cast, all of which is lost with the sole use of these DRE systems.


See also

*
Electronic voting Electronic voting is voting that uses electronic means to either aid or handle casting and counting ballots including voting time. Depending on the particular implementation, e-voting may use standalone '' electronic voting machines'' (also ...
* Open Voting Consortium *
Optical scan voting system An optical scan voting system is an Electronic voting, electronic voting system and uses an Optical reader, optical scanner to read marked paper ballots and Vote counting system, tally the results. History Marksense systems While mark sense tech ...
* Security seal * Voter-verified paper audit trail * Electronic voting in Brazil * Electronic voting in the United States#Direct-recording electronic counting * Vote counting#Direct-recording electronic counting *
Voting machine A voting machine is a machine used to record votes in an election without paper. The first voting machines were mechanical but it is increasingly more common to use ''electronic voting machines''. Traditionally, a voting machine has been defi ...
** Voting_machine#Direct-recording_electronic_(DRE)


References


External links


Electronic voting website
by Rebecca Mercuri
Verified Voting
Electronic voting methods pt:Urna eletrĂ´nica