Voting Technology

Secretary of State's Task Force on Uniform Poll Worker Training Standards

September 14, 2004, Sacramento, California

Summary of Remarks by Kim Alexander, President
California Voter Foundation

• Voting system security is a lot like airport security – it’s highly dependent on thousands of people operating in a many different locations doing their jobs extremely well.

• Pollworkers are on the front lines – how they act and what they do impacts how confident voters feel about their ballots being counted and the final election results.

• Importance of procedures – must be clearly written and available to the public. Procedures should be posted online and available for public review inside polling places. This will reduce the burden on pollworkers to answer voters’ individual questions.

• Paper voting option should be part of the procedures – let the voters know they have the right to cast a paper ballot in e-voting counties.

• Incorporate the production of printed vote summaries from voting machines into the procedures – pollworkers need to be uniformly instructed how to produce, post and store summary vote totals from electronic voting machines and in-precinct optical scanners.

• Chain of custody of equipment is a key security element that is dependent on all pollworkers carefully following the procedures. Procedures to safeguard the chain of custody of voting equipment must be further developed and standardized.

• Pollworkers can protect ballot secrecy by ensuring electronic voting machines are set up inside polling places to insure voter privacy.

• Procedures for handling provisional ballots need to be standardized.

• Pollworkers handling electronic voting equipment need to be trained to locate and utilize reliable electrical outlets inside polling places. They also need to be trained to detect whether a voting machine is operating on battery power.

• Recruiting young pollworkers and/or high school students to work in the polls can help bridge the technology gap inside polling places.

• Pollworkers need access to a phone and to the county elections office throughout Election Day to ensure any issues or problems that arrive are promptly addressed.

• Hiring extra, more highly trained pollworkers who can serve as roving inspectors and troubleshooters on Election Day can insure that problems at polling places are quickly remedied.

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This page was first published on September 21, 2004 | Last updated on January 27, 2006
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