By Noel H. Runyan
About 10 years ago, Los Angeles County was faced with a decision of whether to spend their millions of HAVA (Help America Vote Act) dollars on the poorly designed and mostly inaccessible voting systems that were being offered by voting system vendors or to find an alternative solution. The county chose the bold alternative of designing their own voting system, one that could better meet the needs of their diverse electorate. This was a major effort, since Los Angeles County is home to approximately a quarter of the voters in the state of California. The County started this effort by formally launching a Voting System Assessment Project (VSAP) and establishing a VSAP Advisory Committee representing various communities, advocacy groups, and other stakeholders. They also established a VSAP Technical Advisory Committee composed of subject-matter experts representing technical backgrounds in accessibility, usability and security of election technology.
With the aid of disability groups and other stakeholders, a set of General Voting System Principles was developed and adopted by the VSAP Advisory Committee to guide the voting system development and implementation.
The thorough list of design principles included accessibility-related principles such as the requirement that the system must guarantee a private and independent voting experience for everyone, including voters with a full range of types of disabilities and those with limited English proficiency.
Some of the advocacy groups that participated in and provided significant feedback in the VSAP research, design, and testing activities were representatives from United Cerebral Palsy of Los Angeles, California Council of the Blind, Disability Rights California, Communities Actively Living Independent and Free, the Los Angeles County Commission on Disability, and the Braille Institute.
Over 3,800 stakeholders participated in focus groups, surveys, community discussions, brainstorming sessions, and user testing.
For my own part, I was involved as a member of the VSAP Technical Advisory Committee. One of my hot buttons was making sure that the design included access and security concerns from the very start, rather than having them added on late in the design process, as after thoughts or Band-Aids.
I also pushed repeatedly, throughout the design process to make sure that the voting machine included an attached ballot box, to assure it would support hands-free ballot casting. When representatives of election poll workers' interests strongly pushed back against having those ballot boxes on each machine, we pressed them to describe the reasons for their strong concerns.
The engineers developed technical solutions that removed most of their concerns, and we eventually reached consensus on an acceptable design that included workable attached ballot boxes.
To me, this was an excellent example of how LA County's inclusive design process worked well to derive solutions to many of the design road blocks that seriously hampered other voting system designs.
The award-winning Palo Alto based human-centered design firm, IDEO, was engaged as a major partner in the research and development of several generations of prototype voting machines that were tested and redesigned many times.
The IDEO team spent several days at my home learning about accessibility issues and tools, and I spent several days at their Palo Alto facilities, discussing and testing their various prototype designs. IDEO took several different prototype voting machine designs to Los Angeles, where they ran exhaustive human factors tests with typical Los Angeles voters or potential voters.
Feedback from Los Angeles area voters with disabilities helped the IDEO team make several surprising human factors discoveries.
One was the realization that the design could be greatly simplified and functionally improved by designing the support for the touch screen display so that its height and angle could be adjustable enough to accommodate very different height requirements, alleviating the need to raise and lower the whole voting machine. Prior to that, many voting system designers assumed the whole machine had to be raised or lowered for height accommodation.
Admittedly, over the last several years, there were many times when we all felt quite frustrated with the slow pace of the VSAP voting system development, because reaching consensus with so many stakeholder interest groups seemed like trying to herd cats.
However, now that the VSAP has produced an excellent finished prototype design, all the time and effort invested in including feedback from so many stakeholders in the design process was well worth the time and frustration.
* What is this new voting system?
Basically, the new voting system is an accessible paper Ballot Marking Device or BMD. It looks somewhat like a simplified computer terminal or cash issuing machine. It allows you to insert a blank ballot in a slot, use the visual display or audio interfaces to make your vote selections, have your choices printed on the ballot, and then be offered an opportunity to verify the correct marking of the printed ballot before the machine places your paper ballot in the attached ballot box.
The paper ballot is a simplified form of ballot, called a selections-only ballot. That means that the ballot only has the names of each contest, followed by the voter's choice for that contest. This makes it much easier to verify the correct marking of the ballot.
The verification of the marked ballot is accessible in several ways. Before casting into the ballot box, a sighted voter can view the actual marked paper ballot.
Voters who are blind can choose to have the machine scan in and read back the marking it finds on the printed ballot, or the voter might choose to remove the ballot and scan it with their own smart phone camera and reading system such as the KNFB Reader.
* Summary of the VSAP Ballot Marking Device Accessibility Features
1. Touch screen display with height and angle adjustments
2. Multiple languages and the ability to toggle back and forth between them
3. Choice of high or low contrast
4. Text size options for medium, large, and extra-large characters
5. Audio ballot option speaking all languages
6. Voice rate and volume controls
7. Attached headphones
8. Audio jack for users’ own headphones or listening devices
9. An A-B switch control jack on the front of the machine
10. Tactile control keypad attached by flexible cable
11. Braille labels and unique shapes for keypad buttons
12. Wheelchair accessible height and controls
13. Integrated Ballot Box
14. Paper ballot verification option for both audio and touch screen users
15. Front edge sensor for scanning vote selections from a mobile vote carrier or “poll pass”
* Additional Access-related Features of the Voting System
The County has completely redesigned, large print, vote by mail paper ballots. For voters who have access to computers or smart mobile devices, LA County will provide a method for voters to visit a County web site to download their ballot definition file. Then, using their preferred access tools and taking as much time as they wish, voters use that ballot definition file and a special program or app to make their ballot selections. When finished, the system generates a vote selections carrier or poll pass. This “poll pass” digitally represents all the voter's selections and can be either printed on paper or stored on a smart phone or another mobile device.
The voter then takes this representation of their vote selections to their polling place, where they can scan it into one of the voting machines by simply waving the paper or mobile device screen past the front edge of the voting machine. The voter can then accessibly review all their vote selections as if they had just entered those choices on the voting machine. They can go on to print, verify, and cast their ballot on the machine in the normal way.
* Braille Display Support
We architected the design of the new voting system so that it might be possible to support attaching external standard braille displays to the USB interface jack. However, designing a USB interface to prevent security exposures would hold up the system's introduction in 2018, so the LA voting systems will not initially support external display attachments.
Voters who wish to use their braille displays will need to advocate for LA County to invest in the effort to develop a secure USB port.
* Vote Center Issues
Recent state legislation has paved the way for counties in California to start using vote centers, instead of many local neighborhood polling places.
Originally, I assumed using vote centers was a bad idea, but I have since found that there are more advantages to vote centers then I formerly thought. Instead of over 4,000 separate local polling places in LA County, the County might replace them with something like 700 vote centers or super polling places. Instead of being open for just one election day, the vote centers might be open for 10 days. Switching to vote centers may present some people with greater transportation challenges, assuming they will be, on average, further from their homes compared to current local polling places. However, it may be possible to select vote centers with better access to public transportation systems. It is claimed that vote centers might be more accessible, including access to bathrooms, etc. The staff at vote centers could more easily have better training. Allowing voting throughout the week and the weekend might make it easier for everyone to accommodate their own schedules, plan for rides, baby sitters, etc.
Now, it is not clear how well many of the possible advantages of vote centers will work for us. However, one of the most promising is that vote centers in LA County will be able to accommodate anyone, since the Ballot Marking Devices can print any needed ballot style for any voting precinct. Any valid LA County voter should be able to go to any of the County's vote centers and vote without being turned away or forced to vote provisionally.
* In Summary
Thanks to the support of many stakeholder groups, the new LA County voting system has a very robust and flexible design that can be modified to assure that it can keep up with changes in voting laws, technology innovations, and the changing needs of voters and elections officials. The County has completed the system research, design, and engineering phases of the VSAP process and has developed several prototypes of this new system. These prototypes are functional units that allow for interactive demonstration of the voting system. Los Angeles County is now starting the manufacturing phase of the project and plans to have the units available for use in the 2018 election.
In the meantime, LA County election officials will be involved in a major outreach program to help folks learn about and plan to start using this exciting new system.
