An electronic pollbook, also known as an e-poll book, is typically either hardware,

software Software is a set of computer programs and associated software documentation, documentation and data (computing), data. This is in contrast to Computer hardware, hardware, from which the system is built and which actually performs the work. ...

or a combination of the two that allows election officials to review and/or maintain voter register information for an

election An election is a formal group decision-making process by which a population chooses an individual or multiple individuals to hold public office. Elections have been the usual mechanism by which modern representative democracy has opera ...

, but does not actually count votes. This software or hardware is used in place of paper-based poll books, which are typically three-ring binders. Often, the functions of an e-pollbook include voter lookup, verification, identification, precinct assignment,

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 secret voting. It was originally a small ball (see blackballing) used to record decisions made by voters in Italy around the 16 ...

assignment, voter history update and other functions such as name change, address change and/or redirecting voters to correct voting location. Where this is deployed, it has both consolidated broad data (from entire city,

county A county is a geographic region of a country used for administrative or other purposes Chambers Dictionary, L. Brookes (ed.), 2005, Chambers Harrap Publishers Ltd, Edinburgh in certain modern nations. The term is derived from the Old French ...

and/or

federated state A federated state (which may also be referred to as a state, a province, a region, a canton, a land, a governorate, an oblast, an emirate or a country) is a territorial and constitutional community forming part of a federation. Such states d ...

) into usable information at a polling place and has replaced a paper-based system or complemented the paper processes. This consolidation has replaced or supplemented a manual process, usually a telephone call, from a precinct back to the local or regional board of elections. Normally, the information handled by an e-pollbook is public information that can be found in public or online. In 2006, at least two vendors had problems with e-pollbooks, including

Diebold Diebold Nixdorf is an American multinational financial and retail technology company that specializes in the sale, manufacture, installation and service of self-service transaction systems (such as ATMs and currency processing systems), point ...

Maryland Maryland ( ) is a state in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It shares borders with Virginia, West Virginia, and the District of Columbia to its south and west; Pennsylvania to its north; and Delaware and the Atlantic Ocean to ...

in September 2006 and Sequoia Voting Systems in

Denver, Colorado Denver () is a consolidated city and county, the capital, and most populous city of the U.S. state of Colorado. Its population was 715,522 at the 2020 census, a 19.22% increase since 2010. It is the 19th-most populous city in the Unit ...

in November 2006. More jurisdictions are adopting electronic poll books in place of cumbersome paper-based poll books. For example, in January 2014, the City of Chicago reached an agreement with Election Systems & Software to provide more than 2,100 ExpressPoll voter check-in and verification devices to support the city's 1.6 million registered voters. The e-pollbook system was first used in Chicago's 2014 primary elections.

References

Election technology Elections {{Election-stub