ELECTION UPDATES
More early voting observations from California, and a question about the Diebold VVPAT device
by Michael Alvarez
Thursday, June 01, 2006
SNIP
My friend's voting experience went fine, but afterwards, when we were walking in front of the early voting location, he asked me about the paper audit trail. He wanted to know where it was on the voting device. I was surprised, and asked him whether or not he had seen it when he voted ...
he said he didn't see any paper trail, and didn't know where it was. This, by the way, is someone who works with technology all day long and is very much a techie!snip
...(I)...refer readers to this photo.
This is an image of a Diebold Elections System AccuVote-TSx DRE voting machine with a VVPAT attachment (at right). (Photographer: User:Joebeone)Here, the VVPAT device is located on the lower right of the terminal, underneath the blue shield that is perpendicular to the machine (the actual VVPAT paper ballot is behind that shield). I noticed that on one of the voting devices today this shield was closed, thus meaning that unless a voter using that device with the shield closed knew where the VVPAT was located and opened the shield, he or she might not be aware that the VVPAT ballot was even there! (Note that one of the pollworkers who did not want us looking at the machines walked around and flipped the screen up today after we noted this problem.)
Is this the reason my friend yesterday was not aware of the VVPAT ballot? I don't know. Is this leading some voters to be confused about the VVPAT? Maybe. I asked the inspector why that shield was there, and he said that he thought it was there to protect the device for storage. My reaction is that it should be removed when the devices are in operation (or somehow fixed open during voting), just to insure that it is not shut and that it does not either confuse voters or lead them to not know where their VVPAT ballot is located.
snip
http://electionupdates.caltech.edu/2006/06/more-early-voting-observations-from.html