Presentation
Check It to Protect It: Understanding the Behaviors Driving Ballot Verification
DescriptionThis study sought to understand the factors influencing voters to verify their paper ballots produced by an electronic Ballot Marking Device (BMD). To tackle this question, 60 voters participated in mock elections where their votes on the electronic BMD displayed their selections accurately, but then a subset of their votes on the printed ballots were altered. After the system printed the paper ballot, two user interface (UI) interventions aimed at improving ballot verification rates were displayed in the following sequence: (1) a digital-based prompt instructing voters to check their ballots, and (2) a paper-based prompt requiring voters to handscribe their signature, a checkmark, or a sentence on the paper ballot. The results revealed that the paper-based prompt did not influence ballot verification performance, as all participants who detected at least one anomaly destroyed their compromised ballots after encountering the digital-based prompt. The overall detection rate on the digital-based prompt was high, with 88% of voters detecting changes in their ballots, suggesting that this ballot verification intervention was an effective countermeasure to encourage voters to examine their paper ballots. The findings from this study can inform voting system design guidelines that motivate voters to independently audit their own ballot for anomalies.
Event Type
Lecture
TimeThursday, October 16th1:30pm - 1:50pm CDT
LocationGrand Hall I
Usability and System Evaluation