A Document Analysis System for Supporting Electronic Voting Research

As a result of well-publicized security concerns with direct recording electronic (DRE) voting, there is a growing call for systems that employ some form of paper artifact to provide a verifiable physical record of a voter´s choices. In this paper, we present a system we are developing to support a multi-institution, cross-disciplinary research project examining issues that arise when paper ballots are used in elections. We survey the motivating factors behind our work, discuss the special constraints raised in processing ballots as opposed to more general document images, and describe the current status of our system.