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Aballot marking device (BMD) orvote recorder is a type ofvoting machine used by voters to record votes on physicalballots. In general, ballot marking devices neither store nor tabulate ballots, but only allow the voter to record votes on ballots that are then stored and tabulated elsewhere.
The first ballot marking device emerged in the late 19th century, but were only widely used starting in the 1960s. Today,electronic ballot markers (EBMs) have come into widespread use asassistive devices in the context ofoptical scan voting systems. In the context of paper ballots,pens andpencils are used to record votes on ballots, but they are general-purpose items.
There is no consensus about the terminology used to refer toballot marking devices or electronic ballot markers, and wherea jurisdiction uses one term, there is frequently no referenceto the other. For example,Hart InterCivic and the state ofColorado only list BMD andballot marking device in their glossaries.[1][2] TheMinnesota andIEEE P 1622 glossaries, on the other hand, refer to EBM andelectronic ballot marker (orelectronically-assisted ballot marker).[3][4] TheCanadian government appears to prefer the termassistive voting device.[5]
These terms are not, strictly speaking, synonyms.Ballot marking device defines a broad category, whileelectronic ballot marker excludes older mechanical devices, andassistive voting device only applies when the device serves as anassistive device.
The first ballot marking devices specifically designed for use in elections emerged in the late 19th century along with proposals to use various punched-card ballot forms. Kennedy Dougan filed for patents on a punched-card system using a ballot marking device in 1890.[6][7] Urban Iles filed a proposal for a more sophisticated system in 1892.[8] The patents for these machines suggest that their primary goal was to provide for mechanical vote tabulation while retaining paper ballots that could be used to verify the operation of the tabulator in the event of any question. The punched cards used by these early machines were not designed to be compatible with any other data processing equipment.
In 1937, Frank Carrell, working forIBM applied for a patent on a ballot marking device that recorded on standardpunched cards. This was incorporated into a full-sized voting booth with voter interface that resembled a mechanicalvoting machine, but recording on ballot cards that could be tabulated on standard punched-cardtabulating machines.[9]
None of these machines was commercially successful. The first commercially successful ballot marking device was the Votomatic. This was based on thePort-A-Punch, a handheld device for recording data on pre-scoredpunched cards. Joseph Harris filed his first patent on what would become the Votomatic in 1962.[10]
Ballot cards punched on a Votomatic could be tabulated by standard punched card tabulating machines or sorted oncard sorters. The machines cost only $185 each in 1965 dollars, and weighed only 6 pounds. This was one of the first machines to attract serious thinking aboutaccessibility; John Ahmann filed for a patent on a punching stylus for the Votomatic adapted for use by voters withmotor disabilities in 1986.[11] IBM marketed the Votomatic until 1968, when it spun off Computer Election Systems Inc. to produce and market the system. By 1980, the Votomatic system was used by over 29% of U.S. voters. By 1992, the Votomatic had replaced mechanical voting machines as the dominant voting system used in the United States. The dominance of the Votomatic ended abruptly following theFlorida election recount of 2000.[12]
One of the major benefits of the Votomatic was that the machines were inexpensive enough that a polling place could have several machines, each with a ballot label printed in a different language.
The needs of minority voters also drove the development ofelectronic voting in Belgium. In 1991, a Belgian, Julien Anno working with a group fromTexas Instruments filed a patent application for an electronic ballot marker.[13] The Jites and Digivote systems used inBelgium are similar to this, although they usemagnetic stripe cards instead of thebar codes used in the TI patent to record the ballot.[14] Belgium continues to use ballot marking devices, although the new machines use thermal printers to print human readable text along with a machine-readable bar code.
The AIS "Sailau" voting system developed inBelarus andKazakhstan is conceptually similar to the Belgian system, except that it records votes onsmart cards instead of bar codes or magnetic stripe cards.[15]
The passage of theHelp America Vote Act in 2002 required new voting systems to beaccessible. This led Eugene Cummings to file for a patent in 2003 on a machine that became the AutoMARK.[16] This machine has atouch screen,tactile keyboard, andheadphone jack, as well as support for several otherassistive devices, and it records votes on ballots used by several widely usedoptical scan voting systems.[17] By 2016, the AutoMARK was used statewide in 10 states in the United States, and widely used in 19 additional states.[18]
Other systems which print ballots in the same size and layout as hand-marked ballots, include Avante,[19] ClearAccess,[20] Dominion ICX[21]though full face can be turned off,[22]and Verity Touch.[23]
Sanford Morganstein also filed for a ballot-marking device patent in 2003, primarily motivated by the desire for avoter-verified paper audit trail.[24] Morganstein founded Populex Corporation to commercialize this system, and by 2004, the system was brought to market, certified to meet the2002 Voting System Standards.[25] Like Julien Anno's ballot marking device proposal, the Populex system prints a compact summary ballot containing a bar code that is scanned as the voter drops the ballot in the ballot box. Unlike Anno's system, however, the Populex system also prints a human-readable summary on the ballot for voter verification. Morganstein's system never achieved deep market penetration, although it was used inWorth County, Missouri in 2012.[26]
One strength of punched card ballots is that, voters can, in principle, verify that the punches on the ballots correspond to the choices the voter intended, though this is difficult.[27] In the case of the Belgian magnetic-stripe cards and Kazakh smart cards, independent voter verification of the contents of the ballot card is impossible.
Several other ballot marking devices have come on the market to compete with the AutoMARK. All of these print human readable content on paper ballots, but in several cases, these machines follow the Populex model by adding a machine-readablebar code. Voters cannot easily verify that the bar code matches the human-readable print, but in an audit, a hand count of the human-readable ballots can be compared with a machine count of the bar-coded content to verify that the electronic ballot marker was honest.
It has been noted that the information incorporated into the barcode or QR code may not match the human-readable information printed on the ballots, and it would be impossible to determine if that is the case without audits by computer coding specialists.[28]
