In most democracies other than the United States, voters with disabilities are often required to forgo ballot secrecy in exchange for their right to vote. In the United States, that's considered unacceptable, and in fact it is illegal. This is why we have ballot-marking devices.

Sources

• Can Voters Detect Malicious Manipulation of Ballot Marking Devices?
• Voter Verification of BMD Ballots Is a Two-Part Question: Can They? Mostly, They Can. Do They? Mostly, They Don't
• Can Voters Detect Errors on Their Printed Ballots? Absolutely
• Do Ballot Barcodes Threaten Election Security?

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at how@voting.works

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works

For a few years in the early 2000s, the US deployed fully electronic voting machines, also known as DREs, fairly broadly. Today, DREs are mostly gone, replaced by voter-verifiable paper ballots.

Sources:

• https://www.wired.com/2004/11/computer-loses-4500-votes/
• https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/26/magazine/election-security-crisis-midterms.html
• https://www.nytimes.com/2003/07/24/us/computer-voting-is-open-to-easy-fraud-experts-say.html
• https://www.nytimes.com/2004/05/01/us/high-tech-voting-system-is-banned-in-california.html
• https://verifiedvoting.org

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at how@voting.works

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works

Let's talk about why we need voting machines in the US, and the specific types of voting machines we use and how they work.

• The Reality of Full Hand Counts: A Guide for Election Officials, by the Elections Group
• Harris County voters wade through longest ballot in the state on first day of early voting, October 2022
• A Brief Illustrated History of Voting, by Professor Douglas W. Jones
• THE 2000 ELECTIONS: THE PALM BEACH BALLOT; Florida Democrats Say Ballot's Design Hurt Gore, New York Times, November 2020
• The Center for Civic Design
  
  

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at how@voting.works

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works

Welcome to How Voting Works, a limited series podcast about the mechanics of how we vote in the United States, and in particular about the technology we use to cast our votes.

This is Episode 1.

The Secret Ballot is the most interesting, profound, and complicated aspect of modern elections. It's also the one requirement that makes everything about elections difficult.

References:

• "One Vote Counts for None", Nov 14th, 2006.
  https://www.kait8.com/story/5675029/one-vote-counts-for-none/
• "E-voting 2006: A touch screen, a missing vote, a mystery in Arkansas", Nov 14th, 2006.
  https://www.computerworld.com/article/1647712/e-voting-2006-a-touch-screen-a-missing-vote-a-mystery-in-arkansas.html

How Voting Works is a limited series podcast made by VotingWorks, the only non-profit maker of voting machines in the US.

Questions and comments are always welcome. Email us at how@voting.works

All episodes licensed under a Creative Commons 4.0 Attribution License. Use as you please, just give us credit by linking back to https://how.voting.works