CAMPUS

UF professor's invention makes voting more accessible

Kevin Brockway
kevin.brockway@gainesville.com
Gilbert

University of Florida professor Juan Gilbert has developed technology to make voting more accessible.

The question remains whether Gilbert’s invention, Prime III, will become more widely used at polling locations throughout the country. But the software interface already has been used in New Hampshire for the 2016 presidential election and in Ohio in the 2018 midterm elections with no reported hiccups.

Before coming to UF in 2014, Gilbert first developed Prime III at Auburn in 2003 as a secure, electronic system accessible for voters with physical disabilities. Gilbert modified it in 2011 to run through Google Chrome. By implementing the technology through a browser, Gilbert was able to add speech support, voice recognition, and text and speech in multiple languages. With the use of a headset or microphone, voters can cast their ballots by voice, touch or both.

“We’ve modified it, tweaked and tested it with every imaginable demographic,” Gilbert said. “People that can’t see, can’t hear, people that can’t read, people without arms. We tested seniors, about every population you can imagine.”

Now chair of the Department of Computer and Information Systems and Engineering at UF, Gilbert has spent his academic career researching human-centered computing. The technology was funded through a pair of grants, one through a portion of the $3 billion in funding from the Help American Votes Act in 2002 and one through a $4.5 million grant in 2011 from the Election Assistance Commission.

“Voting has a deep, deep history in the United States,” Gilbert said. “So I tell my students all the time, that you should be proud of this, because think of it this way, you’ve changed the way voting should be done in the United States.”

The main obstacle that Gilbert has faced in his technology not being more widely used in elections is that it is not federally certified. Federal certification for voting machines, Gilbert said, is a lengthy process and costs in the neighborhood of $700,000 to $1 million. When Gilbert invented Prime III, he chose not to file for intellectual property, making it an open source invention, which allows the public to take ownership of it.

“We’re not a vendor, so I don’t have a load of cash to do something like that,” Gilbert said.

Gilbert said his decision not to file for a patent was intentional because he was concerned about how his personal political leanings would impact use of the technology.

“When I first invented Prime III and I would talk to election officials, they would say, this is a great idea but who owns it?” Gilbert said. “I’d say, 'I do, and the next question is, well, who do you vote for?' When I said open source in the public domain, no one has ever asked me who I vote for.”

Still, Gilbert said Prime III has managed to make some inroads in a pair of states. New Hampshire, a state that doesn’t require federal certification for voting machines, used it in 2016. Two counties in Ohio used the technology last November for absentee ballots, which don’t require federal certification.

Gilbert said the feedback he’s received from the two states has been positive.

“It is somewhat of a challenge because it’s different than what they are used to, a voting machine manufacturer gives them equipment and support and helps them in a lot of ways,” Gilbert said. “With the technology, like in New Hampshire, they have an IT department which is very strong, and they are able to put this together and make this work for them … you need IT talent to do an open source voting system and that’s what I’m hearing from election officials at this point.”

Eventually, Gilbert said he believes Florida and other states will try Prime III. With it being an open source company, Gilbert was able to provide the Prime III technology to New Hampshire for free, and charged a one-time licensing fee for the two counties in Ohio. Basic voting machines, on average, run from $2,500 to $3,000.

“No one in the world can ever say they hacked our technology, so we were secure,” Gilbert said. “The usability and accessibility is there, and then there’s another aspect of this, the cost savings are tremendous, I mean it’s just crazy how much money they can save in a state this big. We’ll see. It will be interesting to see how this works, but I haven’t given up hope on Florida.”