UConn Engineers Ensure Integrity of Connecticut’s Elections

The UConn VoTeR Center monitors the reliability of the state's electronic voting machines.

<p>Prof. Alexander Shvartsman. Photo by Chris Larosa</p>
Alexander Shvartsman, professor of computer science and engineering, heads the VoTeR Center. Photo by Chris Larosa

Thanks to the work of a team of UConn engineers, Connecticut voters can feel confident that the votes they cast will not be compromised due to faulty electronic technology.

The UConn Voting Technology Research Center (VoTeR Center) was established in 2006, the year that Connecticut began to upgrade its voting machines from the manual lever technology to more modern systems required for compliance with the Help America Vote Act of 2002.

The center, led by computer science and engineering professor Alexander Shvartsman, recently won the University’s Program Award for Excellence in Public Engagement.

With funding from the Secretary of the State’s Office, the VoTeR Center was commissioned to advise the State regarding the reliability of the electronic voting machines now being used in Connecticut. These new ballot-counting systems, known as the AccuVote Optical Scanners (AV-OS) are an electronic alternative to manual lever machines, which are no longer in use.

The AV-OS machine uses ballots marked by voters to record their votes, providing a paper trail that enables auditors to confirm the accuracy of the machine count.

The center conducts technological assessments of the AV-OS machines and provides technological post-election audit results. It also participates in the analysis of hand-counted ballot audits that cover 10 percent of the districts.

The VoTeR Center team, in addition to Shvartsman, includes three other faculty members from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, professors Aggelos Kiayias, Laurent Michel, and Alexander Russell; graduate students Seda Davtyan, Derrick Lawrence, Nicolas Nicolaou, and Thérèse Smith; an undergraduate assistant, Eugene Kovalev; and an engineer, Tigran Antonyan.

The team is currently working on the technological audit for the November 2010 elections, and will soon perform an analysis of the hand-counted audit returns for the elections.

<p>voting machine</p>
An electronic voting machine scans a paper ballot filled out by a voter. Stock photo

In the August 2010 primaries, 73 precincts – or 10 percent of all polling locations statewide – were randomly selected for a hand-counted audit. Results of this audit concluded that 3.9 percent of the sample showed a discrepancy of 1 vote, and 0.4 percent showed a discrepancy of between four and six votes. Importantly, 95.7 percent showed no discrepancy between the hand-counted vote and the electronic results.

“A small number of discrepancies is inevitable,” says Shvartsman. “People sometimes mark the bubbles incorrectly, making it impossible for the machines to read them.” He adds that “while any computer-based system may fail, there was no case where a follow-up investigation could attribute the discrepancy to the machine error.” Audit results can be found at the VoTeR Center website.

The memory cards used in these machines to tabulate ballots are programmed by LHS Associates of Methuen, Mass. The specific information for each election is input onto the cards, and is then sent to polling locations across the state. Each polling location receives four identical cards, one of which is sent to UConn for pre-election testing.

Shvartsman and his colleagues test a sample of the memory cards before each election, to ensure that the cards have been programmed correctly, and have not been tampered with. Former Secretary of State Susan Bysiewicz says the pre-election testing of these cards has made Connecticut a national leader in voting security.

The center also inspects the contents of the memory cards after the election, to make sure their use has been consistent with a proper electoral process.

Looking to the future, Shvartsman says the center will likely be involved in upgrades of the system intended to improve the methodology of electronic voting.

“The process is quite challenging,” he says, “but with the help of my colleagues and students, we are able to help Connecticut move forward.”