Balloting: Speeding Up the Voting Process

Abstract

Long wait times at the voting polls has grown to be one of the biggest issues in the United States (U.S.) voting process. To address this issue, Balloting is presented as part of a solution to speed up the voting process. The Balloting process gives the voter an opportunity to electronically mark a ballot at his/her convenience, print the completed ballot in the form of a Quick Response (QR) code, and on Election Day, the voting machine is used to scan the voter's QR code, which brings up the voter's prior completed ballot for review and modification before officially casting the ballot. A preliminary study was conducted to measure the efficiency of Balloting compared to other methods of voting. As hypothesized, the study revealed that Balloting significantly reduced voting time, which consequently reduces long wait times at the voting polls. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2013.