Cluttered ballot may be at fault, expert says (Florida recount)

[Freddie Stubbs]

Sarasota County's ballot was poorly designed, an expert said, one possible factor in voters skipping over the 13th Congressional District race.

BY PHIL LONG, JACK DOLAN AND MARC CAPUTO
[e-mail]

SARASOTA - The electronic ballot implicated in 18,382 nonvotes in one of the nation's hottest congressional races was a ''poster child'' for bad ballot design, according to a top voting-systems expert.

The problem: The 13th Congressional District race shared the same page as the higher-profile governor's race, cluttering voters' screens and making it more likely they would miss the race entirely, said the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Ted Selker.

''I've said it to everyone who will listen for the last five years: You're going to get fewer errors if you give each race its own page,'' said Selker, chairman of a joint project launched by MIT and Cal Tech to try to prevent a recurrence of the problems following the 2000 elections.

Sarasota County Elections Supervisor Kathy Dent said the county's ballot followed well-established rules. ''I don't think it was a bad ballot design,'' she said.

more: http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/news/state/16014263.htm

[Demit]

1. So they buried the race at the end of a long list of candidates for governor.

So people would think well, this page is just the rest of the gubernatorial candidates...I'll skip to the next page...

Such a disgrace. Graphic design is not brain surgery. There's a way to direct people's eyes to where you want them to go—and a way to deliberately confuse them. Too bad Jennings workers weren't anticipating this kind of chicanery upfront. If the ballot design—again! And again in Florida!—is the reason for strange atypical voter behavior, this has to be a focus for good government groups in future elections. This is voter suppression.

[Hav]

2. .

Yeah, that's just not normal.
If that were my job, I'd probably get fired for stupid things like this. Even the most basic rules for designing user interfaces would have covered that.

[w4rma]

3. "butterfly" ballot redux?

For anyone who thinks that all these acts of supposed incompetence are only coincidences, I would like to make a lot of money very quickly so I have a nice big bridge in San Fransisco on sell just for you.

[klook]

4. The RW talking point will be

"Anybody who's confused by this ballot is too stupid to vote."

[John Q. Citizen]

5. What about the hundreds of reports of people who tried to vote the race and

it didn't come up on the final sceen? What about the early touchscreen voters who had an approximate 2% undervote in that race?

How come this design affects mostly Democratic precincts?

That has nothing to do with design.

This is just another cover story.

[The Deacon]

6. Back In The Day

Democratic campaigns would hand out "palm cards" as close to the polls as allowed to show where on the ballot their candidates were located to combat "burying" candidates. Frank Mankiewitz claimed in '72 that a good palm card operation was worth 5% (okay, McGovern lost that election - but we picked up 24 seats in the House.)
Have we all gotten so tied up in media campaigning we've forgotten the simple nuts & bolts stuff?

[hedgehog]

7. Many of the people on our side just don't have time to look over

all the races until they get to the polling place. I second the notion of a good palm card sent out to the voters ahead of time.

[John Q. Citizen]

8. Oh that will take care of it. Until the voters try to actually cast their ballot,

then off into cyber space and a 16% percent unervote. Then next time we can just print the palm cards bigger! Yeah.

If you guys buy this "ballot design was the problem BS," then you aren't paying attention.

Why did the the early voters experience a 2% under vote and the election day voters experience a 16% undervote? Because we didn't hand out palm cards?

[The Deacon]

9. My County (Lee County, Georgia)

Put a sample ballot online - that's why I was able to vote in a reasonable amount of time. Otherwise I would still be at the polling place reading all the ballot initiatives (we had a bunch about granting ad valorem taxes & non-profits.) So, yeah, I can buy the idea that bad ballot design can cause under-votes.