Guidelines for a Plain Language Ballot

These guidelines are based on the results of an empirical study comparing a ballot with traditional language instructions (Ballot A) to a ballot with plain language instructions (Ballot B).

Voters were more accurate voting the ballot with plain language instructions. Voters preferred the ballot with plain language instructions by a wide margin (82%).

What to say and where to say it

1. Be specific. Give people the information they need.
   
   
2. At the beginning of the ballot, explain how to vote, how to change a vote, and that voters may write in a candidate.
   
   
3. Put instructions where voters need them.  For example, save the instructions on how to use the write-in page for the write-in page.
   
   
4. Include information that will prevent voters from making errors, such as a caution to not write in someone who is already on the ballot.
   
   
5. On an electronic voting system, never have a page with only a page title (such as the Ballot A page that just said Non-partisan offices).
   
   
6. Make the page title the title of the office (State Supreme Court Chief Justice rather than Retention Question).
   
   
7. Have voters confirm that they are ready to cast their vote with a Cast Vote button, not a Confirm button.
   
   
8.  At the end, tell people that their vote has been recorded.

How to say it

9. Write short sentences.
   
10. Use short, simple, everyday words. For example, do not use "retention" and "retain." Use "keep" instead. For another example, use "for" and "against" for amendments and measures rather than "accept" and "reject."
    
11. Do not use voting jargon ("partisan" "non-partisan") unless the law requires you to do so. If the law requires these words, work to change the law. Instead refer to contests as "party-based" and "non-party-based."
    
12. Address the reader directly with "you" or the imperative ("Do x.").
    
13. Write in the active voice, where the person doing the action comes before the verb.
    
14. Write in the positive. Tell people what to do rather than what not to do.
    
15. Put context before action, "if" before "then." For example, To vote for the candidate of your choice, touch that person’s name.
    
16. When you want people to act, focus on verbs rather than nouns. For example, Write in a candidate's name.
    
17. When giving people instructions that are more than one step, give each step as an item in a numbered list.
    
18. Do not number other instructions. When the instructions are not sequential steps, use separate paragraphs with bold beginnings instead of numbering.
    
19. Put information in the order that voters need it. Don’t tempt voters to irrevocable actions before explaining the other options.

What to make it look like

20. Break information into short sections that each cover only one point.
    
21. Keep paragraphs short. A one-sentence paragraph is fine.
    
22. Separate paragraphs by a space so each paragraph stands out on the page.
    
23. Do not use italics.
    
24. Use bold for page titles.
    
25. Use bold to highlight keywords or sections of the instructions, but don’t overdo it.
    
26. Keep all the instructions in the left column. Do not put instructions under the choices for a contest.
    
27. Do not use all capital letters for emphasis.  Use bold.  Write all instructions in appropriate upper case and lower case as you would in regular sentences. If the law requires you to use all capital letters, work to change the law.
    
28. Use a sans serif font in a readable type size.

These guidelines are part of a report on research commissioned by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The research was conducted by Janice ("Ginny") Redish and Dana Chisnell, with Sharon Laskowski and Svetlana Lowry of NIST. You can download the full report at vote.nist.gov.

Attending South by Southwest Interactive? Come see the most important panel on the program: "Voting: the 233-year-old design problem" with Dana Chisnell, Larry Norden, Ric Grefe, and Dana Debeauvoir, Monday, March 14 at 3:30 pm in 9ABC in the Austin Convention Center. Come say hello! 

Top 10 guidelines for creating a plain language ballot

In June 2009, Ginny Redish and Dana Chisnell presented the findings from research they did for NIST on the language of instructions on ballots at the Usability Professionals' Association conference. In addition to their many fascinating findings, they distributed a handout with quick tips for creating and presenting plain language instructions for ballots. Here they are: 



What to say and where to say it

1. At the beginning of the ballot, explain how to vote, how to change a vote, and that voters may write in a candidate.

2. Put instructions where voters need them. For example, save the instructions on how to use the write-in page for the write-in page.

3. Include information that will prevent voters from making errors, such as a caution to not write in someone who is already on the ballot.


How to say it

4. Write short sentences.

5. Use short, simple, everyday words. For example, do not use "retention" and "retain." Use "keep" instead. For another example, use "for" and "against" for amendments and measures rather than "accept" and "reject."

6. Write in the active voice, where the person doing the action comes before the verb.

7. Write in the positive. Tell people what to do rather than what not to do.

8. When giving people instructions that are more than one step, give each step as an item in a numbered list. Do not number other instructions. When the instructions are not sequential steps, use separate paragraphs with bold beginnings instead of numbering.


What to make it look like

9. Keep paragraphs short. A one-sentence paragraph is fine.

10. Separate paragraphs by a space so each paragraph stands out on the page.

- From Redish, Chisnell, Newby, Laskowski, and Lowry, Use of Language in Ballot Instructions, NIST IR 7556.

To see all 28 guidelines, go to http://vote.nist.gov/NISTIR-7556.pdf. The guidelines are the last appendix in the report, pages 189-190. 

Testing ballots: Real names or fictional? Direct how to vote or not?

How do you design a study to learn about ballot and voting system usability without doing the research during an election? The ideal situation would be to watch over voters’ shoulders on Election Day. But because we prize voting privately in the United States, observing voting on Election Day just is not an option. What’s a researcher to do?

It’s a challenging research situation.

What ballot should be used in the study? Should you use a real ballot from a recent election? What are the tradeoffs there? Next, you have to set up a situation that is similar to Election Day but isn’t. Turns out that making a study a lot like Election Day doesn’t really work for research.


Why researchers use constructed ballots with fictional names

There's a lot of research about whether fictional names are okay in voting studies, particularly by the people at Rice University in the ACCURATE project. They found that fictional names are okay as long as they're realistic. The NIST standard ballot for certification testing uses fictional names. Many researchers have picked up that ballot (or subsets of it) to use in their research.

When you use real names locally, it can be jarring if the design or the format looks different from what participants are expecting, and you instantly have artifacts from that. If there's one thing that does not look like the ballot they used, then voters notice and it's an instant distraction. So why not make the whole thing up?

Most researchers have decided not to use a real ballot from a recent election with. Why not? Using a constructed ballot, with fictional contests, names, and amendments or questions:

• avoids asking people to vote in a contest where they might have their own opinions, or where it asks them to reveal their political preferences
  
  
• levels playing field across levels of political interest
  
  
• allows constructing a ballot that can be used to test different usability issues in types of contests or tasks

Why researchers tell participants how to vote

Now, why not let study participants vote the way they want to? Why give them a slate to vote or task scenarios to work from?

In usability tests, researchers often ask participants to carry out pre-determined scenarios. Sometimes this is done to measure specific behavior, sometimes to make sure certain things are tested, sometimes to make sure that the facilitator is ready for the next expected thing. Part of the art of conducting a usability study is knowing when to let participants do what they want to do and knowing when to go back to the test design. (In the ideal world, what the participant wants to do and what you want them to do are the same thing.) Researchers in the elections space make this decision consciously and deliberately to make sure that they can collect the data measures that will prove (or not) a hypothesis.

Instructed voting makes it possible to evaluate error rates without directly observing the participant voting. People who study how people use other kinds of technology try to instrument the system to capture test data or observe directly. These things are difficult to do with voting systems. So, instructed voting versus "just vote as you might" asks the participants to be thoughtfully accurate, and not just randomly mark the ballot.


The special challenges of voting research

Researching how people interact with most technology, a researcher can go into the field, hang around where the person is doing what they want to do and ask questions. Election Day is not the time for that. Most voting research requires that the number of variables be limited and those that remain are controlled.
So far, researchers have found that using the NIST standard ballots and directed tasks is the best way to manage that.

-- By Whitney Quesenbery and Dana Chisnell