Ordering Information
Paper Text,
215 pages
978-0-8157-3563-2,
19.95
Cloth Text,
215 pages
978-0-8157-3564-9,
49.95
Voting difficulties hung over America's presidential election in 2000 like a dark cloud. Passage of the Help America Vote Act in 2002 sparked further interest in the physical act of casting a vote, leading to a number of technological innovations. Voting Technology is the first book to investigate in a scientific and authoritative manner how voters respond to the new equipment.
An interdisciplinary group, the authors synthesize their work in American politics, campaigns, human and computer interaction, and human factors. They employ their collective expertise in evaluating five commercially available voting systems, each one representing a specific class based on shared design principles, as well as one prototype system not currently available. They evaluate each system according to key criteria such as accuracy, speed, and ease of use. The results reveal the good and bad about the systems, including specific features that contribute to greater clarity as well as those leading to confusion and error.
The concluding chapter of Voting Technology pulls together best practices that will guide voting-system manufacturers, ballot designers, election officials, political analysts, and voters. In a political system based on free and informed exercise of personal choice, the least we can do is make sure those choices are being correctly cast and accurately recorded and counted.
Book Event: Voting Technology: The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting a Ballot, March 21, 2008.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Paul S. Herrnson
Paul S. Herrnson is founding director of the Center for American Politics and Citizenship at the University of Maryland. His books include Congressional Elections: Campaigning at Home and in Washington (5th ed., CQ Press, in press).
Richard G. Niemi
Richard G. Niemi is Don Alonzo Watson Professor of Political Science at the University of Rochester. His previous works include Vital Statistics on American Politics 2005-06, with Harold Stanley (CQ Press, 2005).
Michael J. Hanmer
Michael J. Hanmer is assistant professor of government and politics at the University of Maryland. He has published in the area of election reform.
Benjamin B. Bederson
Benjamin B. Bederson is associate professor of computer science and director of the Human-Computer Interaction Lab at the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland.
Frederick C. Conrad
Frederick C. Conrad is research associate professor in survey research at both the University of Michigan and University of Maryland.
Michael W. Traugott
Michael W. Traugott is professor of communication studies and senior research scientist in the Center for Political Studies at the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research.
Selected Reviews
"Well written, well documented, and fascinating. Too little research has been done in the area of voting systems, even though it clearly affects all Americans. Voting Technology is a ‘must read’ for anyone interested in this important topic."
Paul DeGregorio,
former chairman, U.S. Election Assistance Commission and current chief operating officer of Everybody Counts, Inc.
"In the aftermath of the 2000 Florida recount, it became clear that academic research on voting technologies had been inadequate. This book pushes the research frontier forward substantially and provides the foundation for a new generation of research on voting technologies and election administration."
R. Michael Alvarez,
California Institute of Technology, coauthor of Point, Click, and Vote: The Future of Internet Voting
"It seems as if everybody talks about voting technology, but nobody seems to do anything about learning how to improve it—until this new volume. Finally, we have a book that does serious research on voting technology so that we can make it better."
Henry Brady,
University of California–Berkeley
“Voting Technology is an extremely significant book, with findings I have not seen in any other publication. It is easy to read, and the conclusions are compelling. This is exactly the kind of research that the U.S. Election Assistance Commission should be pursuing. Election administrators around the country should read it.”
Ray Martinez,
Rice University, former EAC commissioner