Tim...I was hoping you would find time to update this article with the correct information you were provided as per our telephone conversation just prior to Christmas.
As we discussed, your calculations did not include all the eVoting ballots as you neglected to include all the advanced poll vote counts, (from both the election years that you looked at: 2008, and 2012) and thus the results you came up included less than 25% of the actual School Board ballots cast electronically.
In the end the difference in participation between casting a ballot using eVoting for the School Board member and paper voting at a polling station for a School Board, does not create any significant deviation in voter participation at all. The difference using the corrected numbers results in an 8% difference between the methods and when compared to a paper only election (2004) the difference is only 2.2% (71% vs 68.8%).
From our experience, when eVoting is offered as a ballot casting option in elections, the convenience of voting is the most often cited benefit voters comment on; why someone doesn’t vote a particular race given the option to vote it in the comfort of your home, office or anywhere else would certainly make for an interesting study; from my perspective at least.
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As we discussed, your calculations did not include all the eVoting ballots as you neglected to include all the advanced poll vote counts, (from both the election years that you looked at: 2008, and 2012) and thus the results you came up included less than 25% of the actual School Board ballots cast electronically.
In the end the difference in participation between casting a ballot using eVoting for the School Board member and paper voting at a polling station for a School Board, does not create any significant deviation in voter participation at all. The difference using the corrected numbers results in an 8% difference between the methods and when compared to a paper only election (2004) the difference is only 2.2% (71% vs 68.8%).
From our experience, when eVoting is offered as a ballot casting option in elections, the convenience of voting is the most often cited benefit voters comment on; why someone doesn’t vote a particular race given the option to vote it in the comfort of your home, office or anywhere else would certainly make for an interesting study; from my perspective at least.
Dean Smith President – Intelivote Systems Inc.