How Voting Works

When you buy a car, you have some reasonable expectation that the car will be safe to drive because manufacturers are required to perform a series of standard tests by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

When an airline buys an airplane, and when you fly on that airplane, we can reasonably expect that that airplane is safe to fly because the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) regulates airplane designs, manufacturing, and even the airworthiness of individual airplanes, maintenance schedules etc.

So, this November, when you fill out your ballot and insert into a precinct tabulator, or when you fill out a ballot at home and mail it to be counted at county headquarters, how do you know that the voting equipment your county is any good? And when the county was buying that equipment, how did they know? Who’s doing the due diligence?

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at [email protected]

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works

Tina Peters is serving a jail sentence for tampering with voting equipment when she was clerk in Mesa County, Colorado. The situation has become particularly political, but what actually happened in Mesa County, Colorado?

In this episode, we cover the technology and the facts. How voting works in a vote-by-mail state like Colorado, what Tina Peters actually did, and what actual election risks her actions caused.

References:

• Tina Peters
• NYT and VoteBeat coverage

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at [email protected]

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works

Typically, election security experts shy away from engaging with fraud allegations, because the theories are numerous and often lacking in evidence.

But it's Christmas time, and you're probably hanging out with family, and surely stories about voting machines and election fraud are bound to come up. You need some cold, hard facts to bring to the table.

This is the podcast episode for you.

References:

1. https://medium.com/mit-election-lab/the-blue-shift-in-the-2020-election-669a0cffdb2f
2. https://playingwithelectiondata.substack.com/p/anomalies-in-rockland-county-ny-voting
3. https://risklimitingaudits.org
   
   

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at [email protected]

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works

A special episode of How Voting Works.

Last week, I was interviewed by Professor Michael Alvarez. We first met more than 20 years ago when we both worked with the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project.

Professor Alvarez has a podcast and video series called Election Science Office Hours, and I was his guest.

Check out the video at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJkiWDh7igk

And check out Professor Alvarez's whole video series: https://www.youtube.com/@LCSSPCALTECH

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at [email protected]

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works

How do we trust our ballot tabulators? Post-election audits, that's how.

• Risk-Limiting Audits
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Risk-limiting_audit
• More about Risk-Limiting Audits
  https://risklimitingaudits.org/
• Professor Halderman's analysis of Antrim County 2020
  https://www.usenix.org/conference/usenixsecurity22/presentation/halderman
• Forensic Audit of Windham, New Hampshire 2020
  https://www.doj.nh.gov/sb-43-forensic-audit
  
  

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at [email protected]

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works

In most democracies other than the United States, voters with disabilities are often required to forgo ballot secrecy in exchange for their right to vote. In the United States, that's considered unacceptable, and in fact it is illegal. This is why we have ballot-marking devices.

Sources

• Can Voters Detect Malicious Manipulation of Ballot Marking Devices?
• Voter Verification of BMD Ballots Is a Two-Part Question: Can They? Mostly, They Can. Do They? Mostly, They Don't
• Can Voters Detect Errors on Their Printed Ballots? Absolutely
• Do Ballot Barcodes Threaten Election Security?

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at [email protected]

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works

For a few years in the early 2000s, the US deployed fully electronic voting machines, also known as DREs, fairly broadly. Today, DREs are mostly gone, replaced by voter-verifiable paper ballots.

Sources:

• https://www.wired.com/2004/11/computer-loses-4500-votes/ 
• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/magazine/election-security-crisis-midterms.html 
• https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/us/computer-voting-is-open-to-easy-fraud-experts-say.html 
• https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/us/high-tech-voting-system-is-banned-in-california.html
• https://verifiedvoting.org

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at [email protected]

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works

Let's talk about why we need voting machines in the US, and the specific types of voting machines we use and how they work.

• The Reality of Full Hand Counts: A Guide for Election Officials, by the Elections Group
• Harris County voters wade through longest ballot in the state on first day of early voting, October 2022
• A Brief Illustrated History of Voting, by Professor Douglas W. Jones
• THE 2000 ELECTIONS: THE PALM BEACH BALLOT; Florida Democrats Say Ballot's Design Hurt Gore, New York Times, November 2020
• The Center for Civic Design
  
  

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at [email protected]

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works

Welcome to How Voting Works, a limited series podcast about the mechanics of how we vote in the United States, and in particular about the technology we use to cast our votes.

This is Episode 1.

The Secret Ballot is the most interesting, profound, and complicated aspect of modern elections. It's also the one requirement that makes everything about elections difficult.

References:

• "One Vote Counts for None", Nov 14th, 2006.
  https://www.kait8.com/story/5675029/one-vote-counts-for-none/
• "E-voting 2006: A touch screen, a missing vote, a mystery in Arkansas", Nov 14th, 2006.
  https://www.computerworld.com/article/1647712/e-voting-2006-a-touch-screen-a-missing-vote-a-mystery-in-arkansas.html

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at [email protected]

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works