A voting machine is provided allowing an illiterate, sight impaired or blind individual to cast a vote in privacy and without assistance from another party. The voting machine includes a ballot box having a plurality of voting mechanisms for allowing the individual to cast a vote. One voting mechanism is provided for each election candidate/each side of an election issue. The voting machine also includes an audio player that plays an audio presentation that guides the individual through the voting process by identifying each voting mechanism.

Traditionally, a voting machine has been defined by the mechanism the system uses to cast votes and further categorized by the location where the system tabulates the votes.

The History of Voting Machine

During the 1970′s, nearly everyone could cobble together a “voting machine”, and sell it to local election officials. In 1975, the General Accounting Office’s Office of Federal Elections (predecessor to the Federal Election Commission) signed an interagency agreement with the National Bureau of Standards to develop operational guidelines that election administrators could use to help ensure the accuracy and security of the computer-based vote-tallying process. This report and comments from State and local election officials led the U.S. Congress to direct the Federal Election Commission (FEC), in conjunction with the National Bureau of Standards (now known as the National Institute of Standards and Technology), to conduct a study on the feasibility of developing voluntary engineering and procedural performance standards for voting systems used in the United States. In early 1984, this three-year effort produced Voting System Standards: A Report on the Feasibility of Developing Voluntary Standards for Voting Equipment.

Based on the recommendations in that report, Congress appropriated funds permitting the Commission to begin developing voluntary national standards for computer-based voting systems. The FEC began the process in 1984, and completed it with the Commission’s approval in 1990 of the first national performance and test standards for punchcard, marksense, and direct recording electronic voting systems.

Voting machine have different levels of usability, security, efficiency and accuracy. Certain systems may be more or less accessible to all voters, or not accessible to those voters with certain types of disabilities. They can also have an effect on the public’s ability to oversee elections.

• e-voting which is physically supervised by representatives of governmental or independent electoral authorities (e.g. electronic voting machines located at polling stations);
• remote e-Voting where voting is performed within the voter’s sole influence, and is not physically supervised by representatives of governmental authorities (e.g. voting from one’s personal computer,mobile phone,television via the internet (i-voting).

Electronic voting technology can speed the counting of ballots and can provide improved accessibility for disabled voters. However, there has been contention, especially in the United States, that electronic voting, especially DRE voting, could facilitate electoral fraud.

Electronic voting systems for electorates have been in use since the 1960s when punched card systems debuted. Their first widespread use was in the USA where 7 counties switched to this method for the 1964 presidential election. The newer optical scan voting systems allow a computer to count a voter’s mark on a ballot. DRE voting machines which collect and tabulate votes in a single machine, are used by all voters in all elections in Brazil and India, and also on a large scale in Venezuela and the United States. They have been used on a large scale in the Netherlands but have been decommissioned after public concerns. Internet voting systems have gained popularity and have been used for government elections and referendums in the United Kingdom, Estonia and Switzerland as well as municipal elections in Canada and party primary elections in the United States and France.

There are also hybrid systems that include an electronic ballot marking device (usually a touch screen system similar to a DRE) or other assistive technology to print a voter verified paper audit trail, then use a separate machine for electronic tabulation.

Source : http://wikipedia.org

Reason for Voting

In a representative government, voting commonly implies election: a way for an electorate to select among candidates for office. In politics voting is the method by which the electorate of a democracy appoints representatives in its government.
A vote is an individual’s act of voting, by which he or she expresses support or preference for a certain motion (for example, a proposed resolution), a certain candidate, a selection of candidates, or a political party. With a secret ballot to protect voters’ political privacy, voting generally takes place at a polling station. The act of voting is voluntary in some countries; whereas some countries, such as Argentina, Australia, Belgium and Brazil, have compulsory voting systems.

Types of votes

Different voting systems use different types of vote. Suppose that the options in some election are Alice, Bob, Charlie, Dan, and Emily and they are all running for the same position:
In a voting system that uses a single vote, the voter selects his or her most preferred candidate. “Plurality voting systems” use single votes.

A development on the single vote system is to have two-round elections, or repeat first-past-the-post. However, the winner must win by 50% plus one, called a simple majority. If subsequent votes must be used, often a candidate, the one with the fewest votes or anyone who wants to move their support to another candidate, is removed from the ballot.
An alternative to the Two-round voting system is the single round Preferential voting system (Also referred to as Alternative vote or Instant run-off) as used in Australia, Ireland and some states in the USA. Voters rank each candidate in order of preference (1,2,3 etc.). Votes are distributed to each candidate according to the preferences allocated. If no single candidate has 50% or more votes then the candidate with the least votes is excluded and their votes redistributed according to the voters nominated order of preference. The process repeating itself until a candidate has 50% or more votes. The system is designed to produce the same result as an exhaustive ballot but using only a single round of voting.

In a voting system that uses a multiple vote, the voter can vote for any subset of the alternatives. So, a voter might vote for Alice, Bob, and Charlie, rejecting Daniel and Emily. Approval voting uses such multiple votes. In a voting system that uses a ranked vote, the voter has to rank the alternatives in order of preference. For example, they might vote for Bob in first place, then Emily, then Alice, then Daniel, and finally Charlie. Preferential voting systems, such as those famously used in Australia, use a ranked vote.

In a voting system that uses a scored vote (or range vote), the voter gives each alternative a number between one and ten (the upper and lower bounds may vary). See range voting. Some “multiple-winner” systems may have a single vote or one vote per elector per available position. In such a case the elector could vote for Bob and Charlie on a ballot with two votes. These types of systems can use ranked or unranked voting, and are often used for at-large positions such as on some city councils.

Anti voting

Anti-voting is an existing philosophy about why voting under systems with particular qualities is an irrational form of action that has no efficient means of influencing actual decision-makers and power-brokers, the policies they implement and the resulting society that is shaped by said policies and practices.

Anti-voting members are not against the democratic possibility, but instead, disillusioned that an existing one is truly what it claims to be. They often argue that they are more for democracy than the voting public that they feel participates in a system that is fallacious logically and creates a passive sense of accomplishment that is instead empty of power, empty of any direct influence on general social decision making.

Members of the part of the population who find these ideas to be most true often cause strong and emotional reactions in voting publics, and are accused of apathy, nihilism, pessimism and passivity. They are also accused of invoking in those who believe in voting resulting hopelessness, depression and suicidal ideation.

Source : http://wikipwedia.org