Input Devices ~ Automated Voting Machines - 9th Week in INTRICT

At the 9th week in INTRICT, Sir Oli discussed about input devices and presented to us the two automated voting machines that are possible to be used in the next elections in the Philippines. After presening the two automated voting machines by video clips, Sir Oli ask us to evaluate the two and decide which one will we prefer to use in the next elections. These machines are:

Direct Recording Electronic

- a touch screen voting machine that displays the name and picture of the politicians in the screen and the voter will vote by pressing the picture of the politicians they desire and confirm their vote by pressing the vote button.

Advantages

~ After voting, the votes are directly goes to the main system, that makes the vote counting faster.

~ Less Cheating because the system is hard to decrypt.

~ Voting errors such as voting two politicians at one position, and voting a politician in a position which he/she isn't running for, will be prevented because of the system design of the DRE.

Disadvantages

~ DUGYOT factor of the Filipinos.

~ The number of people needs to be voted are to many, so it will take a long time for one voter to finish casting his/her votes.

~ Because DRE is a touchscreen, it will easily broken and the voting will be get delayed.

Optical Mark Recognition

- the voters will be given an optical answer sheet that contains the list of names of the candidates. Voters cast their votes by shading with pencil the circle before the name of the desired candidates. After shading, the optical answer sheet will be given to the official. Voting is until three o'clock in the afternoon and after that it is time to put all the optical answer sheets in the OMR to be scanned.

Advantages

~ Casting votes are faster because each voter could vote simultaneously and submit the accomplished optical answer sheet to the officials.

~ Cost are predictable and defined.

~ Has a capture speed ranging around 4,000 forms per hour.

Disadvantages

~ Cheating is easy here because the officials can erase and replace the vote and replace it with a new one before putting the optical answer sheet in the OMR.

~ More cases of errors because the officials can't check wether there is something wrong in the optical answer sheets.

While we were deciding which one will be used, Sir Oli told us about the factors to consider in choosing an Input Device and these are:

- Accuracy and Correctness

- Completeness

- Speed of Data Capture

- Reliability of the Device

- User-friendliness

- Environmental Applicability

- Disability Considerations

- Cost, Life of the Device

- Hygiene in Use

PS: In every input there should always be an output.