Personalized Voting: The Intersection of Cloud and Mobility.

Current research and development being conducted by the international Global Public Inclusive Infrastructure Consortium GPII is to create technology for cloud-based accessibility. Using this new technology, users of computer systems can create personal profiles that specify how computer applications should be configured to meet their individual needs. National Institute of Standards and Technology researchers have developed a prototype voting support system with enhanced accessibility capabilities based on the cloud-based accessibility work of the GPII, to evaluate the applicability of this new technology in the voting domain. Using this prototype, the Next Generation Voting Platform NGVP, voters can use a mobile device e.g. tablet computer to exchange data with a cloud-based system to download settings in order to configure complex ballot interfaces for marking a blank ballot. The research performed on the NGVP suggests that cloud-based accessibility has the potential to be useful to voters when integrated into mobile ballot-marking systems.