Usability of electronic poll books
What makes an electronic poll book usable for poll workers, election staff, and voters?
On Election Day, poll workers check in hundreds of voters. There will be voters who are easy to handle and others with a variety of special requirements for ID, signatures, updates, or who need to be redirected to the correct location. E-pollbooks can help ensure that every person is handled correctly and that the line keeps moving. But what makes an e-pollbook easy to use.
In a 2016 project that included fact-finding interviews with election officials who use e-pollbooks, product reviews with system vendors about the design and usability features of their products, we developed a method for testing e-pollbooks to easily learn what works well (or doesn’t) for poll workers and a checklist of their usability benefits and potential problems for e-pollbooks.
The report is in three parts:
- Part 1: Electronic pollbooks: usability in the polling place
- Part 2: Usability test plan for electronic poll books
- Part 3: Checklists for usability and accessibility of electronic pollbooks
In 2021, after the Election Assistance Commission approve the Voluntary Voting System Guidelines (VVSG) 2.0, we began working on an analysis of the usability and accessibility requirements for voting systems to identify how they might be used or adapted for e-pollbooks.
Developing the usability test
One of the goals of the project was to develop a method for testing electronic pollbooks for usability that could be used by product developers, election officials, and as part of a certification program. After collecting comments on the first draft, we ran a pilot to “test the test.” The pilot reminded us of how important it is to see real people (in this case a few local poll workers) doing real tasks (using the scenarios to check-in mock voters) on real products.
We used what we learned in three intense days at the University of Baltimore Usability Test Lab to update the test plan and make it procedurally easier. And, we created a checklist of specific usability issues to help any jurisdiction purchasing a new e-pollbook, or looking for ways to streamline poll worker training on an existing system.
Workshop with election officials
A workshop at the IACREOT conference on June 27 with election officials and people designing electronic poll books, looked at the usability issues and benefits of electronic poll books, especially focused on how they are used in the polling place.