Prime III: Voting for a More Accessible Future
Simone A. Smarr, Imani N. Sherman, Brianna Posadas, Juan E. Gilbert · 2017 · Proceedings of the 19th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility (ASSETS '17) · doi:10.1145/3132525.3134771
Summary
This demonstration paper presents Prime III, an open-source, multimodal electronic ballot marking system designed to allow all voters — regardless of ability or disability — to vote independently and privately on the same machine. Developed at the University of Florida beginning in 2003, Prime III was created in response to the voting infrastructure failures exposed by the 2000 US Presidential Election and the subsequent passage of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) in 2002. Despite HAVA's mandate for accessible voting, about one-third of voters with disabilities reported difficulties at polling places in 2012, including problems reading the ballot, understanding equipment, and maintaining privacy. Current accessible voting systems typically segregate voters with disabilities onto separate machines, reducing privacy and creating an unequal experience. Prime III takes a universal design approach: it is purely software-based, running on off-the-shelf hardware (touchscreen, headset, printer, and two-button textured switch). Voters can interact through touch, voice, or button switches — or any combination — interchangeably throughout the voting process. The system includes text-to-speech audio guidance, a color-blind safe color scheme, and options for visually impaired users. Notably, since only 12% of blind individuals can read Braille, the system prioritizes audio-based input over tactile methods.
Key findings
Prime III was deployed as the accessible voting machine in New Hampshire for both the 2016 primary and general elections, where voters and election officials responded positively and opted to continue using it. The system's privacy-preserving voice input is a notable design choice: voters say "vote" to confirm a selection rather than speaking the candidate's name aloud. Focus groups conducted with visually impaired voters identified key problems with existing voting systems, including delays waiting for accessible machines to be set up and inability to ensure vote privacy. Since Prime III is purely software, it requires only turning on a computer and opening the application — eliminating the separate setup process that flags accessible voters to poll workers. Participants in the focus groups also provided feedback on the system's switch button being overly simple, prompting ongoing redesign work. The system supports multiple modes: in-person voting, absentee voting, and vote tabulation, with the ability to print paper ballots in different formats for auditability.
Relevance
Prime III exemplifies universal design principles applied to civic participation — one of the most fundamental rights in a democracy. The system's core insight is that accessible voting should not mean separate voting; all voters should use the same machine with the same interface options. This has important implications beyond convenience: when voters with disabilities are directed to a different machine, it effectively announces their disability status to everyone in the polling place, compromising both dignity and ballot secrecy. For accessibility practitioners, Prime III demonstrates how multimodal interaction (touch, voice, and switch access) can be combined in a single interface that serves users across a wide spectrum of abilities. The project's open-source nature and use of commodity hardware makes it a practical model for election authorities seeking cost-effective accessible voting solutions. Its real-world deployment in New Hampshire elections provides evidence that universally designed voting systems can work at scale in actual election conditions.
Tags: accessible voting · universal design · multimodal interaction · blindness · civic participation · text-to-speech · switch access · voice input · open source
Standards referenced: HAVA