GR1- User Observation and Analysis

User Observations

Jessica (Town Clerk in Hudson, MA):

Jessica presides over seven precincts in Hudson, MA and was in charge of ~10,000 votes this past presidential election. With their current system, she receives large tally sheets and manually adds up the total. She receives totals from various wardens (supervisors of each precinct) across the county and is in charge of verifying these totals and determining the final numbers. She wants the process to be as fast as possible, but doesn't want to manage the results of the elections directly. 

Lessons learned:

• Ballot counters are paid hourly, so the process needs to be fast in order to save money.
• Jessica is very concerned with verifying that totals are correct and needs to be able to clearly check the vote totals.
• The average age of wardens and ballot counters is extremely old and most are scared of technology.

Denise (Assistant Town Clerk in Hudson, MA):

Denise counted votes in the past election. She worked with someone else to read and record the results of the election, in batches of 50 votes. Some counters record the results of an entire ballot at once, while others record the results of an entire race at once. She added tally marks to the sheet as the person she worked with read the results of the ballot. She wants to be able to record the votes as quickly as possible, but still be accurate. On the current sheets, the running totals are easy to see and she wants to be able to easily add up the results. 

Lessons learned:

•  The more experienced person in the pair tends to do the writing while the newer person reads the ballot.
• When an extra tally mark is made by accident, she would often look for another ballot with this vote, as it was hard to remove them.
  

Amy (Town Clerk in Concord, MA):

Amy has been a Town Clerk in Concord for 15 years. She presides over their 5 precincts and has run hundreds of elections. The town uses programmable machines, called Accuvote, for the tallying of their ballots, but all absentee ballots are hand counted. She has also run elections for the local high school based on her expertise, and has experience hand counting those ballots. Ballots are also counted when there appears to be a problem with the results. She told us about one experience where a wet piece of paper caused a machine to malfunction and for lots of blank votes to appear. In this case, they had to go back and hand count all of the ballots by hand. She uses the machine information to generate reports which can be submitted to the state. Amy is very organized and concerned with securing the integrity of the voting in Concord.

Lessons learned:

•  Average election official age is around 78 (used to be 85). Around 2/3 of election officials have email addresses and the others do not.
• She also detailed the process for write-in candidates which is not uncommon. All ballots with write-ins are tallied and put to the side by ballot counters. The names are later verified by her and either counted or changed to blanks (depending on if they are actual people).

Brittany (Worker in the officer of the Town Clerk in Concord, MA):

Brittany works in the office of the town clerk, and was one of the people who counted the absentee ballots in the most recent presidential election. The town processed 164 absentee ballots this year, and she helped to count around 4/5 of them. Brittany worked as the part of the pair who reads the ballot, while a retired high school principal was the recorder. She discussed how her team went much faster than the other pair who was older and kept having trouble getting their totals to add up correctly.

Lessons learned:

• Some counters have an easy time getting distracted, such as the other pair that was entranced by the stamps of the absentee voters. This led to problems in them forgetting the counts.
• It was much more efficient to go by ballot instead of by race based on the way that the ballots are organized.
• Often when counting ballots, officials are watching and reviewing to make sure that things are done correctly.

*Names have been changed

User Classes

Most of the users are older and retired. Because elections take place during the work day, most people available to count ballots are retired.

Ballot Counters:

The ballot counters divide votes into sets of 50 and then pair off in two. One person reads the results from the ballot while the other records on the tally sheet. 

Audit Supervisors:

The audit supervisors aggregate the votes from the ballot counters. These supervisors are employees of the town and tend to run a large number of elections. They set up the elections and report results.

Needs & Goals

Ballot Counters: 

• Because ballot counters have a cap on the number of hours they can work, they want to get the votes counted as quickly as possible. They would like to record votes both by race and by ballot. As a result, they need an efficient system which supports this functionality.
• This is a task for which accuracy and reliability are very important. As a result, the users aim to have a perfectly accurate ballot counting. They need a system which allows them to easily correct mistakes.
• Elections have very important results, so the users would like to clearly view running totals.
• Many of the users are new to this job and don't have much time to learn it. Hence they need a system which is easy to learn and repeat.
• Elections have varying numbers of candidates. Users want to be able to handle a large number of candidates easily.
• Write-ins are also a common occurrence. Ballot counters need a way to note that these occurred and also note that blank votes occurred.  

Audit Supervisors:

• The audit supervisors are responsible for managing the entire election. They need to be able to set up the recording sheets with the correct candidates and races.
• They also need to make sure that no votes are counted that were not entered during polling hours, so they need a way to start and stop elections.
• They also are responsible for monitoring poll numbers to both report the data, and not any irregularities. As a result, they would like to check the total number of votes entered on both precinct and county levels.
• They will need to be able to add total numbers of votes to make sure information is accurate.
• Audit supervisors need to have a way to deal with write-in votes and either record them, or change them to blank votes.
• Audit Supervisors are responsible for paying the hourly ballot counters, so they would like this process to be fast and efficient.