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Topic: Ballot design

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	Ballot - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
		In the simplest elections, a ballot may be a simple scrap of paper on which each voter writes in the name of a candidate, but governmental elections use either pre-printed or electronic ballots, in a wide variety of designs.
		The so-called butterfly ballot used in Florida in the U.S. presidential election, 2000 led to widespread allegations of mismarked ballots.
		For example, one might count the number of ballots whereon the voter had crossed out the name of the political party that nominated the candidate, even if (maybe only if) that voter had voted for him or her.
	en.wikipedia.org /wiki/Ballot_design (596 words)

	Ballot Design (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		Poorly designed ballots, with, for example, small and closely aligned preference squares, can lead to voters' marks overlapping more than one square, with consequent dispute at the count over whether the voter is valid, and, if valid, which party or candidate the voter selected.
		Voters are issued a single ballot containing all the parties or candidates in the election, and they have to indicate on the ballot which of these is preferred before placing the ballot in the ballot box.
		Where separate ballots are provided for each candidate or party, and voters have to choose and envelope the one appropriate to their choice, ballot design issues are relatively simple.
	www.aceproject.org /main/english/po/poc02a (1367 words)

	Design for Democracy - Ballot Design Basics
		Voters want ballots that are easy to understand so they can be confident they have voted as intended, and that their vote, once cast, is counted.
		Theresa LePore, the election official responsible for the infamous Palm Beach County ballot, thought she was making the names of the candidates easier to read by increasing the type size, a change which caused the need for a butterfly layout.
		Designers who specialize in the visual presentation of information are trained to interpret complex data in layout and typography.
	designfordemocracy.aiga.org /content.cfm?Alias=electiondesignballot (264 words)

	Wanted: A Legible Voting Ballot - Why it's time to redesign the ballot design process. By Jessie Scanlon
		Hugh Dubberly, an interaction designer in San Francisco, simplified the type treatments, arrows, and boxes in his proposed Ballot B and also moved the column in which voters mark their choice to the left side of the page next to the candidate names, arguing that their proximity would minimize voting errors.
		Of course, ballot design is but one part of the voting process.
		The ballot was used in Palm Beach County, not Miami-Dade County.
	www.slate.com /id/2089310 (1460 words)

	IRV ballot design (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		It is possible to redesign the ballot to allow voters to mark their ballots in exactly the same manner as they have in the past.
		For example, a ballot design that simply has the voter put a rank number next to each candidate is simple for the voter but may slow down the count since all candidates may have some mark next to their name, the counter will need just that much more attention to pick out the "1."
		A design of this sort may also be necessary for machine-read ballots, so that indications of alternate choices are physically separated from that portion of the ballot where the machine scans for a first-choice mark.
	www.fairvote.org /irv/vt_lite/12ballots.htm (415 words)

	Whitney Interactive Design
		This ballot design is called a butterfly ballot because the two pages of candidates surround the column of punch holes like the wings of a butterfly.
		Voters may mark their ballots incorrectly (that is, for a candidate other than the one they intended), spoil their ballots by (for example) voting for two candidates - so-called overvoting, or may mark the ballot in a way that fails to register their intent.
		Design is always a balance - and the way you know you have achieved a proper balance is to test the design with users.
	www.wqusability.com /articles/voting-background2000.html (5298 words)

	Encyclopedia: Vote (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		A vote, or a ballot, is an individual's act of voting, by which he or she express support or preference for a certain motion (e.g.
		In the United States, an absentee ballot is a ballot that the voter receives and (usually) sends through the mail, rather than travelling to a polling place and marking the ballot at a voting booth.
		Ballot design and the use of voting machines have particular importance, given this issue.
	www.nationmaster.com /encyclopedia/Vote (3004 words)

	In Response to Douglas Jones' "Mark Sense Ballot Design: Human Factor Lessons from Florida 2000"
		As it happens, Elizabeth Jordan and I looked at the issue of voting machine type and ballot design in early 2001 on behalf of Lukasiak and happen to be familiar with the issue.
		Characterizing one ballot in a thousand as "massive" and characterizing a call for investigation as an allegation of fraud was inappropriate. Indeed, contrary to visions of "massive fraud," it doesn’t take many ballots to turn tight elections.
		Ballot spoilage in African American precincts was ten times higher than in white precincts, [6] which is a prima facie violation of the Voting Rights Act.
	www.failureisimpossible.com /ElectionStudies/Response.htm (2771 words)

	AskTog: The Butterfly Ballot: Anatomy of a Disaster
		That specific design was certainly the most important ingredient in what occurred, but, like most disasters, other elements contributed their part.
		They could do nothing to fix the ballot that had caused so many thousands of voters to double-punch the ballots, but they could perhaps get an accurate count of the vote that had been legitimately made, and they rightfully expected such a recount to find their candidate victorious.
		Designers should be required to prove competence and experience in forms layout and interaction design.
	www.asktog.com /columns/042ButterflyBallot.html (2341 words)

	SonicRim - The Palm Beach Ballot (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		The impact of the design of the ballot on the decision-making experience of the voters in Palm Beach County needs to be closely examined.
		From a usability perspective, the layout of the ballot used in Palm Beach County is poor at best, and makes a compelling case for future ballot design to be conducted in conjunction with people who have experience in information design and usability.
		But in designing a ballot that will be used by people of all backgrounds, abilities, levels of visual acuity, dexterity, one has to try to design for everybody.
	www.sonicrim.com /red/us/ballot.html (781 words)

	Florida 2000 Presidential Election
		Also, it is not immediately obvious that the two sides of the ballot are the same race; in the usual butterfly ballot the two sides are separate races and each side has its own column of holes to punch.
		When the antiquated punch-card ballot is punched by the voter, it apparently often occurs that the punching mechanism does not completely dislodge the small piece of paper called the "chad".
		If a dimple is square in the middle of the location specified for a voting area on the ballot and no other dimple occurs in the opponents' voting areas on the ballot, it is a strong argument that the voter intended to vote for that candidate rather than some other candidate.
	arts.bev.net /roperldavid/politics/FL2000.htm (2549 words)

	Honolulu Star-Bulletin Hawaii News
		A University of Hawaii design expert said there are some fundamental problems with the design of the 2002 primary election ballot that could make it difficult for some voters to read.
		Henley, assistant professor of graphic design at UH, said voters may mistakenly fill in the oval after a candidate's name instead of the oval before it, which is the correct mark.
		His design eliminated many of the perplexing horizontal and vertical lines on the ballot and instead focused on defining the borders of each political party so people would stick to voting for candidates within just one party.
	starbulletin.com /2002/09/19/news/story3.html (712 words)

	Ballot Usability in Florida (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		In our ever-mobile world, thorough testing of ballot techniques and standardization may be called for if we are to believe that we truly choose our elected officials rather than flip a coin.
		AP story on Boston.com: Includes photograph of ballot in the holder showing the distance and alignment of the arrows with respect to the holes.
		The Sample Ballot: Large images of pictures taken of the Sample Ballot (not the actual one with the punch holes).
	danbricklin.com /log/ballotusability.htm (1765 words)

	Design of the Ballot Form (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		The butterfly ballot form in Palm Beach County was designed in such a way that it provides highly contradictory cues to voters as they undertake these tasks.
		My conclusions about this ballot are based upon my experience as Director of the University of California Survey Research Center and as a scientific survey researcher who has designed and undertaken surveys in Canada, Estonia, Russia, and the United States.
		They had to go back and forth from one column to another as they deciphered and marked their ballot, and they had to look for punch-holes on the left or the right depending upon the column they were in.
	elections.fas.harvard.edu /statement/hbrady/node1.html (580 words)

	Horn-BallotConfusionByDesign (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		Not most professional information designers, members of a rapidly growing, new profession whose job it is to make sure the immense amounts of complex information we all receive is clear and easy to use.
		Subjects (voters) in that study indicated that the "electronic ballot was organized in a manner that caused confusion as to which button was associated with the corresponding candidate's name." Said one subject: "The square next to (candidate) Clinton's name was for the other candidate to the left.
		Information designer Robert E. Horn is a visiting scholar at the Center for the Study of Language and Information at Stanford University and author of Visual Language: Global Communication for the 21st Century.
	www.stanford.edu /~rhorn/a/policy/artclBallotConfusion.html (643 words)

	Presidential Election Ballot - Topics in Usability
		The ballot was not, in fact, confusing, said Evans, who accused Gore officials of intentionally circulating a poor, fuzzy reproduction of the ballot.
		Moreover, he said, the butterfly ballot was not unique to Palm Beach County, and he held up a copy of the ballot for state judges in Dade County that also divided the candidates into separate, alternating columns.
		He noted that the ballot had been posted in newspapers and public places, as required by law, and said no one complained at the time.
	www.stcsig.org /usability/topics/ballot (2167 words)

	Design Issues: The State of the Ballot
		Design for the greater good is that which is usually overlooked: airport signage, stamps, passports, the driver’s license.
		Design should be valued and recognized for the power it holds.
		Graphic designers are often annoyed that people don’t know what we do: however, if we actually designed the (albeit mundane) essential communications that impact on people’s lives, they might know because we would be perceived as being important enough to know.
	www.commarts.com /CA/coldesign_d/jphW_48.html (1414 words)

	Problems with Voting System Standards
		When the ballot is deposited in the ballot box, it becomes anonymous, but just prior to the moment when the ballot is deposited, it ought to be possible to hand the ballot to the voter and ask "does this ballot properly represent your intent?".
		Unfortunately, because punched-card and optical mark-sense ballots are machine readable variations on the Australian ballot, the introduction of these technologies raises many of the problems that led to the large-scale abandonment of paper ballots during the first half of the 20th century.
		These counts involve real ballots punched or marked by real people, with loose chad that might be knocked into or out of holes in punched cards, and with ballot markings that may be very close to the voting machine's threshold for determining whether a mark is or is not counted.
	www.cs.uiowa.edu /~jones/voting/congress.html (10240 words)

	Salon.com Technology \| Interface bug tips electoral college!
		That is what happened, famously, in the Challenger explosion disaster -- in which, as design expert Edward Tufte famously pointed out, key data was presented to decision makers in a format that failed to highlight the magnitude of risk a freezing-weather space-shuttle launch would entail.
		And that is what happened this week in Palm Beach County, Fla., where an apparently well-intentioned effort on the part of local officials to make their ballot more readable for elderly citizens led to voting-booth confusion that could well have tipped this squeaker election toward George W. Bush.
		That's certainly the consensus of usability and design experts on the Web, who have been posting their analyses of the Palm Beach ballot design since it surfaced as a critical factor in the presidential election.
	www.salon.com /tech/col/rose/2000/11/09/interface_design (808 words)

	The Butterfly Ballot and the Florida Outlier at Gizmos, Inc: Showroom
		All of this only reinforces what Mario said about testing the design of the ballot, by testers representative of the most uneducated audience using the ballot, and in the kind of environment in which it would be used.
		This lines the holes in the ballot form up (or so we expect) to the information in the pages, that are turned to reveal the votes and allow you to punch out the holes correctly.
		The design of a ballot paper should be a no-brainer.
	riccistreet.net /gizmos/showroom/outlier.htm (3831 words)

	author, journalist - Phil Patton (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		The happiest potential butterfly effect of the butterfly ballot would be not just a redesign of voting systems, but a recognition of how important their design is—and how vital technology is to our democracy.
		Where the machine ballot is filled in this order, there shall be a continuation of the ballot in the same order on paper ballots, except that no state or federal opposed officer shall be placed upon a paper ballot.
		In any primary election, if the official ballot is longer than the voting machine can accommodate, paper ballots may be used in conjunction with a voting machine, in which case the order of the offices on the voting machine ballot shall be the same as prescribed in s.
	www.philpatton.com /chad.html (1987 words)

	Design for Democracy : Case Studies (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		From improvements to ballot design and recommendations on voting equipment to informational presentations for election officials, Design for Democracy has become an important resource at the local and national level.
		Conducted by a combined class of senior-level graphic designers and industrial designers in the College of Architecture and the Arts, the project studied the election system in the Chicago area and developed an array of potential solutions to the election system's most pressing concerns.
		Improvements implemented in the Chicago area during 2001 by Design for Democracy.
	www.electiondesign.org /case.html (381 words)

	Past Issues - UI Design Newsletter
		However, the usability pressures on newer technology are also great: the detailed design of the actual voting screens will have a significant effect on the accuracy with which these new devices accurately capture the voters' intention.
		This may include failure to indicate a selection, indicating multiple selections or (in the case of paper ballots), stray marks that mean the ballot cannot be processed.
		In their analysis, the residual voting rate of punch card methods and electronic devices is 50% higher than the rate for manually counted paper ballots, lever machines and optically scanned ballots.
	www.humanfactors.com /downloads/may03.asp (2083 words)

	Shouting into the Wind: Suspicious ballot design (Site not responding. Last check: 2007-10-29)
		Power Line received a note from a reader with a photo of the absentee ballot from Cuyahoga County in Cleveland, OH.
		This is almost as bad as the infamous butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County, Florida in 2000...
		He's right, this is WORSE than the Florida ballot, if the story is true.
	shoutingintothewind.blogspot.com /2004/10/suspicious-ballot-design.html (197 words)

	Free newsletter - HFI's UI Design Update
		Inappropriately designed ballots because individuals without design or usability training are tasked with this important job.
		Voter's confidence in the interaction is also an issue: exit polls reflect that voters are not universally confident that the machine records the vote that they intended or attempted to cast.
		Of particular interest is their additional analysis of the incidence of residual voting errors for counties that have recently switched voting technologies.
	www.humanfactors.com /downloads/may032.htm (2020 words)

	The Chronicle: Daily news: 01/04/2001 -- 01
		Some people thought the ballots were designed to trick voters into selecting Patrick J. Buchanan when they intended to vote for Vice President Al Gore, but Ms.
		Giloth says she is "not that much of a cynic." Instead, she says, it was "lack of training" and failure to think carefully about how information is presented that produced the butterfly ballot.
		People who design information systems and World Wide Web sites are not always thoughtful about presenting information, she says.
	chronicle.com /free/2001/01/2001010401t.htm (486 words)

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