From the 10 steps above it is clear that core steps of voting involve keeping records of people, records of events, records of votes, performing counts of those votes, and displaying results in a systematic way. Such monotonous tasks which don't need much intelligence or creativity would seem best suited for recording, record keeping and counting machines, reducing human labour and human errors. Shifting burden of any part of the voting process (apart from casting votes by humans of course!) from humans to machines is called election automation or voting automation.
Out of group A & group B steps we have seen above, usually machines automating any or of group B steps are termed 'voting machines'. Generally voting machines include some or all of steps 8, 9 & 10 along with previous steps. Machines that perform 8, 9 and 10 without being involved in steps 3 to 7 are called vote counting machines or counting and tabulation machines. First came the mechanical voting machines and now the shift is towards electronic voting machines (EVMs). This web page 22 has a decent timeline of various 'firsts' in voting automation.
The usual excuses used to push election automation, and particularly electronic voting are, saving money, improving speed & efficiency, reducing fraud, improving public confidence, and the most silly one of showing-off hi-tech ability of country/election body 23. But real world experiences in many countries are often quite opposite, as we will see in many later essays and articles. I joked in first para of this section that voting machines should automate only things other than casting of votes by humans, but that's exactly one of the key problems with electronic voting machines. On the inside, the EVMs could be recording or counting wrongly or doing entirely their own manipulations due to error in design, maintenance, working or deliberate mischief and nobody can know. Thus EVMs may actually be 'casting votes of their own volition', different than what vote the human voters intended and thus wrecking genuince elections and consequently the whole politics of nations or regions!
Out of group A & group B steps we have seen above, usually machines automating any or of group B steps are termed 'voting machines'. Generally voting machines include some or all of steps 8, 9 & 10 along with previous steps. Machines that perform 8, 9 and 10 without being involved in steps 3 to 7 are called vote counting machines or counting and tabulation machines. First came the mechanical voting machines and now the shift is towards electronic voting machines (EVMs). This web page 22 has a decent timeline of various 'firsts' in voting automation.
The usual excuses used to push election automation, and particularly electronic voting are, saving money, improving speed & efficiency, reducing fraud, improving public confidence, and the most silly one of showing-off hi-tech ability of country/election body 23. But real world experiences in many countries are often quite opposite, as we will see in many later essays and articles. I joked in first para of this section that voting machines should automate only things other than casting of votes by humans, but that's exactly one of the key problems with electronic voting machines. On the inside, the EVMs could be recording or counting wrongly or doing entirely their own manipulations due to error in design, maintenance, working or deliberate mischief and nobody can know. Thus EVMs may actually be 'casting votes of their own volition', different than what vote the human voters intended and thus wrecking genuince elections and consequently the whole politics of nations or regions!