An analysis of write-in marks on optical scan ballots

Authors:
Theron Ji;Eric Kim;Raji Srikantan;Alan Tsai;Arel Cordero;David Wagner
Affiliations:
University of California, Berkeley;University of California, Berkeley;University of California, Berkeley;University of California, Berkeley;University of California, Berkeley;University of California, Berkeley
Venue:
EVT/WOTE'11 Proceedings of the 2011 conference on Electronic voting technology/workshop on trustworthy elections
Year:
2011

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Abstract

Optical scan ballot systems are widely used in elections today. However, deployed optical scan systems may not always interpret write-in votes correctly. For instance, if a voter writes in a name but forgets to shade in the corresponding voting target, an optical scanner may not detect the write-in, which could lead to a lost vote. In this paper, we study methods for automatic recognition of write-in marks. We then apply these methods to ballots from an election in Leon County, Florida and study the kinds of write-in marks that are seen in practice. Our results from this election show that voters frequently (about 49% of the time) do not fill in the write-in bubble when entering a write-in vote. Consequently, votes may be lost in current voting systems.