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Route Design for Delivery of Voting Machines in Hamilton County, Ohio

Author

Listed:
  • Michael J. Fry

    (Department of Quantitative Analysis & Operations Management, University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati, Ohio 45221)

  • Jeffrey W. Ohlmann

    (Department of Management Sciences, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa 52242)

Abstract

The Help America Vote Act that Congress passed in 2002 required election boards to update their punch card voting systems with new voting technologies by 2006. This change greatly increases the operational and logistical complexities of administering elections in many areas. Because of security concerns and the large physical size of some types of new voting machines, they must be delivered to each polling location during a specified day and time window. Therefore, to generate feasible, cost-effective delivery routes, election boards must solve a difficult vehicle-routing problem. Routes designed by our solution methods have been successfully implemented in Hamilton County, Ohio, to deliver voting machines to polling locations for multiple elections since May 2006. We describe our solution methods and analyze the sensitivity of route costs to time-window and delivery-day constraints. Our sensitivity analysis identified cost-savings strategies that the Hamilton County Board of Elections used to negotiate a new scheduling protocol with poll workers; this protocol reflects a compromise between accommodating poll workers' schedules and reducing the cost of delivering the voting machines. The Board of Elections successfully implemented this new method of specifying delivery time windows, which allowed greater routing flexibility, for the November 2006 midterm election.

Suggested Citation

  • Michael J. Fry & Jeffrey W. Ohlmann, 2009. "Route Design for Delivery of Voting Machines in Hamilton County, Ohio," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 39(5), pages 443-459, October.
    • Handle: RePEc:inm:orinte:v:39:y:2009:i:5:p:443-459
    DOI: 10.1287/inte.1090.0430
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    3. Jeffrey W. Ohlmann & Barrett W. Thomas, 2007. "A Compressed-Annealing Heuristic for the Traveling Salesman Problem with Time Windows," INFORMS Journal on Computing, INFORMS, vol. 19(1), pages 80-90, February.
    4. Olli Bräysy & Michel Gendreau, 2005. "Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows, Part II: Metaheuristics," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 39(1), pages 119-139, February.
    5. J-F Cordeau & M Gendreau & G Laporte & J-Y Potvin & F Semet, 2002. "A guide to vehicle routing heuristics," Journal of the Operational Research Society, Palgrave Macmillan;The OR Society, vol. 53(5), pages 512-522, May.
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    Cited by:

    1. Michael J. Fry & Jeffrey D. Camm & Glenn Wegryn, 2020. "Next Lives Here: Forging Academia–Industry Partnerships in Analytics at the University of Cincinnati," Interfaces, INFORMS, vol. 50(3), pages 166-175, May.

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