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Usability by a broad public is particularly important in voting systems. No matter how secure and reliable a voting system is, if that system places demands on the voter such that he or she is unable to vote successfully, or even uncomfortable with doing so, voters will be disenfranchised. Voting is a particularly challenging human factors problem because voting systems must be usable by citizens regardless of age, disability, education, socioeconomic status, history of computer use, literacy level, native language, and the like. A successful system must go beyond simple usability in terms of the voters' ability to accurately cast their vote, but also must produce confidence in the voter that their intention will be accurately recorded and tallied.
Our research in this area has so far consisted primarily of laboratory usability testing on extant voting systems. If new electronic voting systems are to meet standards of usability, what should those standards be? In our view, those standards should be informed by usability data on extant voting systems, such as paper ballots, lever machines, and punch cards. To date, however, such data do not exist (this was surprising to us).
Thus, we are engaged in empirical testing of voters (or potential voters). Two populations have been be used: Rice undergraduates, representing in some sense the "best-case" scenario (highly educated, low rate of disability, high general visual acuity, etc.), and local Houston residents, recruited through newspaper advertisements. These participants have been brought into a laboratory environment and observed interacting with voting systems using primarily objective techniques (i.e., performance measurement of time and accuracy) and subjective measurements such as scaled responses on attributes such as perceived difficulty and trust. Future work may include videotaped "think aloud" protocols.
Once baseline data are available for traditional voting technologies, issues involved with electronic voting systems (called DREs) will be researched. We hope to apply formal usability analysis methods (e.g., GOMS analysis and/or Cognitive Walkthrough) and field testing, including populations with accessibility concerns such as the blind.
This work is currently funded by the National Science Foundation as part of the ACCURATE center.
Campbell, B. A., Tossell, C. C., Byrne, M. D., & Kortum, P. (2011). Voting on a Smartphone: Evaluating the Usability of an Optimized Voting System for Handheld Mobile Devices. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 55th Annual Meeting (pp. 1100-1104). Las Vegas, NV: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. [PDF]
Piner, G. E., & Byrne, M. D. (2011). The Experience of Accessible Voting: Results of a Survey among Legally-Blind Users. In Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 55th Annual Meeting. [PDF]
Piner, G. E., & Byrne, M. D. (2011). Accessible Polling Places for the Visually Impaired: A Compilation of Survey Results. In Proceedings of the 2011 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (EVT/WOTE). [PDF]
Campbell, B. A., & Byrne, M. D. (2009). Straight party voting: What do voters think? IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, 4(4), 718-728.
Campbell, B. A., & Byrne, M. D. (2009). Now do voters notice review screen anomalies? A look at voting system usability. Proceedings of the 2009 Electronic Voting Technology Workshop/Workshop on Trustworthy Elections (EVT/WOTE '09). [PDF]
Stein, R. M., Vonnahme, G., Byrne, M. D., & Wallach, D. (2008). Voting technology, election administration, and voter performance. Election Law Journal, 7, 123-135. [PDF]
Goggin, S. N., Byrne, M. D., Gilbert, J. E., Rogers, G., & McClendon, J. (2008). Comparing the auditability of optical scan, voter verified paper audit trail (VVPAT) and video (VVVAT) ballot systems. Proceedings of the 2008 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop. [PDF]
Goggin, S. N. (2008). Usability of election technologies: Effects of political motivation and instruction use. The Rice Cultivator: A Student Journal of Public Policy Research, 1, 30-45. [PDF]
Greene, K. K. (2008). Usability of New Electronic Voting Systems and Traditional Methods: Comparisons Between Sequential and Direct Access Electronic Voting Interfaces, Paper Ballots, Punch Cards, and Lever Machines. Master's Thesis, Rice University, Houston, TX. [PDF]
Everett, S. P., Greene, K. K., Byrne, M. D., Wallach, D. S., Derr, K., Sandler, D., & Torous, T. (2008). Electronic voting machines versus traditional methods: Improved preference, similar performance. Human Factors in Computing Systems: Proceedings of CHI 2008 (pp. 883-892). New York: ACM. [PDF]
Goggin, S. N. & Byrne, M. D. (2007). An examination of the auditability of Voter Verified Paper Audit Trail (VVPAT) ballots. Proceedings of the 2007 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop. [PDF]
Everett, S. P. (2007). The Usability of Electronic Voting Machines and How Votes Can Be Changed Without Detection. Doctoral disseration, Rice University, Houston, TX. [PDF]
Byrne, M. D., Greene, K. K., & Everett, S. P. (2007). Usability of voting systems: Baseline data for paper, punch cards, and lever machines. Human Factors in Computing Systems: Proceedings of CHI 2007, (pp. 171–180). New York: ACM. [PDF]
Greene, K. K., Byrne, M. D., & Everett, S. P. (2006). A comparison of usability between voting methods. Proceedings of the 2006 USENIX/ACCURATE Electronic Voting Technology Workshop. [PDF]
Everett, S. P., Byrne, M. D., & Greene, K. K. (2006). Measuring the usability of paper ballots: Efficiency, effectiveness, and satisfaction. Proceedings of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society 50th Annual Meeting. Santa Monica, CA: Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. [PDF]
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