Thursday, August 21, 2008
DRE vs OMR
DRE- Direct Recording Electronic
Features
1. Drag and drop/ click
2. Accurate, has less than 1% error
3. Fast Recording

OMR- Optical Mark Reader
Features
1. Shade circles
2. Fast Recording

DRE vs. OMR
Disadvanteges:

Accuracy
When it comes to accuracy, DRE will win. It has less than 1% error rate compared to the 1% error rate of OMR. Yes, it has a little difference, but due to the large number of voters, that 1% will have a great impact.

Reliability
DRE cannot be easily cheated. It has a good encryption that even the person who made the algorithm cannot decrypt it. The data is stored automatically upon input. As for OMR, it can be easily cheated. Once you've submitted your ballot, it's not automatically ready by the machine. It will stay there until the voting ends, then your vote will be entered to the machine. Your votes can be changed since it's only shaded by a pencil.

Speed
In terms of computation, DRE and OMR has the same speed. However in terms of the number of voters, OMR is more favorable. DRE can accomodate one person at a time, while OMR can accomodate as much people as they permit since they will only need a place and a pencil to vote.

My Verdict:
I would go for OMR, since DRE cannot accommodate large number of people it's not practical to use it unless the government would provide lots of DRE in different voting places. I mean LOTS which is quite costly plus the maintenance of the machines. Since we can't afford it, the government would just place limited DRE devices resulting to a very very slow vote. What's the difference of placing DRE for accurate and fast counting of result but slow voting to a manual computing but fast vote. The time they would finish will most likely be the same. So I suggest to put OMR instead, fast voting, fast count, more accurate than manual, probably more faster than DRE.

OMR Reader