In the recent years, voting
equipments which were widely adopted may be divided into five types:
(1) Paper-based
voting: The voter gets a blank ballot and use a pen or a marker to indicate
he want to vote for which candidate. Hand- counted ballots is a time and labor
consuming process, but it is easy to manufacture paper ballots and the ballots
can be retained for verifying, this type is still the most common way to vote.
(2) Lever voting machine: Lever machine is peculiar equipment, and each lever is
assigned for a corresponding candidate. The voter pulls the lever to poll for
his favorite candidate. This kind of voting machine can count up the ballots
automatically. Because its interface is not user-friendly enough, giving some
training to voters is necessary.
(3) Direct recording electronic
voting machine: This
type, which is abbreviated to DRE, integrates with keyboard; touch screen, or
buttons for the voter press to poll. Some of them lay in voting records and
counting the votes is very quickly. But the other DRE without keep voting
records are doubted about its accuracy.
(4) Punch card:
The voter uses metallic hole-punch to punch a hole on the blank ballot. It can
count votes automatically, but if the voter’s perforation is incomplete, the
result is probably determined wrongfully.
(5) Optical voting machine: After each voter fills a circle correspond to their
favorite candidate on the blank ballot, this machine selects the darkest mark
on each ballot for the vote then computes the total result. This kind of
machine counts up ballots rapidly. However, if the voter fills over the circle,
it will lead to the error result of optical-scan.
2.4 EFFECTIVENESS OF ONLINE VOTING AMONG DIFFERENT COUNTRIES
Recent years, a considerable number
of countries have adopted online voting for their official elections. In this
section, four empirical examples are enumerated as following.
(1) America: Government
of the United States hold election collaterally in several ways, in other
words, each state can choose the suitable way to hold elections independently.
Because there are some debates about online voting system, such as some vote
casts were not counted, or election system crashed during the Election Day.
Secretary of State Kevin Shelley established an “Ad Hoc Touch Screen Task
Force” to research the debates on DRE in February 2003. Shelly advanced that
DRE should include voter verifiable paper audit trails (VVPAT) to solve
electoral debates.
(2) Japan: Japan adopted online voting for
local election in 2002, such as mayor and councilor election of Niimi city in
Okayama prefecture in June 23, 2002; mayor election of Hiroshima city in
February 02, 2003; and mayor election of Kyoto city in February 08, 2004. Take
mayor and councilor election of Niimi city for example, electoral center
surveyed the voters’ reliability when the election finished. There are 83% of
voters considered that online voting system is trusted. 56% of them considered
that the results of online voting and paper-based voting are the same therefore
online voting is sufficient for reliable. The reasons why voters can’t trust
the online voting system are voters worried about the abuses in online voting
system, and they cannot make sure their ballot are recorded correctly.
(3) Belgium:
Election for the Federal Parliament is held in May 18, 2003. In order to assist
voters in being familiar with online voting system, electoral center held
short-term training. Counting efficiency in the election with online voting
system was faster then
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