We can safely pay our bills, balance our bank accounts, and read confidential documents on our smartphones. But when it comes to elections, many polling places still revert back to the paper and pen. Perhaps, we only need to think back to the horrific Florida recount from 2000 and the hours-long lines during the last presidential election to consider that we really do need a makeover of the traditional voting system.
Now, a study from Rice University in Houston, Texas, has suggested that using a smartphone to cast your ballot might just be the smart change to the voting system that we need. After holding a mock election with 84 participants that included 48 smartphone users, the researchers discovered that those using devices actually made fewer mistakes on the mobile voting system compared to traditional voting methods of a electronic voting machine and the paper ballot.
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The study’s authors, professors Michael D. Byrne and Philip Kortum, and former students Bryan A. Campbell and Chad C. Tossell, also suggested that smartphones could increase voter participation. “Nobody likes to wait in line at the polling place, and so mobile voting offers the opportunity to cast votes when and where it is convenient for the voter,” Kortum said in a Rice news release.
Not surprisingly, the problem with smartphone voting is the issue of security and authentication. “Creating voting systems that retain the convenience of mobile phones while still ensuring the security and anonymity we enjoy with current voting technologies will be the biggest design challenge,” Kortum said.
But since America is full of inventors and problem-solvers, we have no doubt that a solution for that is on the horizon.
Tag: Rice University
What Started as Homework Turned Into a Life-Saving Medical Device
A young, eager mind is a powerful thing. A room full of them together, even more so. In Rice University professor Maria Oden’s undergraduate course, they’re striving to solve global health problems. Students in the Rice 360 program, founded by Oden and fellow bioengineer Rebecca Richards-Kortum, first learn about problems in rural hospitals and then design simple solutions that can help. One of the class’s biggest successes is a student design for an affordable “bubble CPAP” (continuous positive airway pressure), a device that pushes air into the lungs of premature infants to help them breathe. The prototype was made from a plastic shoe box and two aquarium pumps. “One of the wonderful things about working with 18-year-olds is that they’re so creative,” Oden told Joe Palca of NPR. “They don’t have fixed ideas about what might not work.” After fine-tuning, the invention was tested at small hospitals in Malawi and is now ready to deploy throughout that country. Students even got to meet a baby whose life was saved by their device. “It sent chills all the way down my entire spine, because I realized that while we’re teaching students, and we want them to leave here believing they can make a difference, this was the picture of a true difference being made,” Richards-Kortum told NPR.