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Report of the Marginal Marks Working Group. David Flater National Institute of Standards and Technology http://vote.nist.gov. Charter.
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Report of the Marginal Marks Working Group David Flater National Institute of Standards and Technology http://vote.nist.gov
Charter Investigate the development of a standard reference set of ballot markings representative of the types of marks that voters make on each common type of optical scan / marksense ballot Goal: Enable VSTLs and acceptance testers to test and document the responses of scanners Non-goal: Define what is a valid vote
Preliminary work Mascher, Mascher & Jones, "Ballot Marks from the Humboldt County 2008 General Election [DRAFT]," May 2010 David Flater, informal review of ballots retained from previous human factors work at NIST Both data sources had active write-in campaigns (real or simulated)
Coincidental findings Most frequent anomaly was misuse of write-in lines Wrote in name but did not fill the target "Emphasis write-ins" "Write In" interpreted as instruction to voter Redundancy similar to writing a check Corrections that won't work Most voters seem to think that the ballot is going to be read by a human Check marks, X's, bleed-through, smudges
Examples Cross-out correction Unmarked write-ins Miscellaneous checks, X's, lines through targets
Main objective "Development of Standard Reference Set of Ballot Markings," https://www.fbo.gov/, solicitation number SB1341-10-RQ-0458 Data collection Hart ballots (square targets) from Clark County, WA ES&S ballots (oval targets) from Spokane County, WA Sequoia ballots (arrows) from Snohomish County, WA Analysis and classification of marks Identification of test set of marks Design and validation of standard reference marks