The slides are up! SxSW and EVN feature sessions on ballot design

There’s been a lot of talk about ballot design and usability testing in places you might not otherwise expect to see it. It’s been exciting to see a growing interest in civic design from everyone from geeks to advocacy groups.

I organized a panel at South by Southwest Interactive with Ric Grefe (AIGA), Larry Norden (Brennan Center) and a Dana Debeauvoir (Travis County Clerk) that not only had a great audience, but made the local papers.

The slides from that talk are available for download.

At a conference called EVN in Chicago where election advocacy groups, local elections officials, and others have met for the last seven years, I was delighted to be on a panel that Whitney Quesenbery put together about working with local elections officials. Our star panelist, Jenny Greeve, was AIGA fellow in Washington State for 2 years. We emphasized that design and testing matters in elections, and the audience seemed to see the appeal. The presentation slides are available here: Dana’s ~ Whitney’s ~ Jenny’s.

Top 10 Ballot Design Principles

Design for Democracy, a project of AIGA, observed hundreds of voters using dozens of variations of designs for ballots over two years of research for the Election Assistance Commission. The results formed the basis of a beautiful design specification for ballots and other election materials that the EAC published in 2006. Below are the top 10 guidelines that came out of that report.

• Use lowercase letters. It’s easier to read mixed case and sentence case text than it is to read all uppercase text. 

• Avoid centered text. Centered text is for wedding invitations and wine labels. Left justified text makes it easier to identify the beginnings of new sentences, assisting skimming.

• Pick one sans-serif font. Serif type faces feature tiny strokes at the ends of characters that may make text more difficult to read. The font used in this blog is Helvetica, which has no serifs – and is thus a sans serif font – and is similar to the recommended typeface for ballots and forms. 

• Use big enough type. Research shows that 12-point type for print is highly readable by most people. On a computer screen, type should be at least 3 mm high. It is possible to use type that is too large for the purpose. Using 16-point or larger type for printed ballots may be too large. 

• Support process and navigation. Voters make their way through a ballot in a particular way, whether it is a print ballot or an electronic one. The design of the ballot needs to reflect how voters expect to use it. It also needs to prompt behavior in the right places. For example, instructions for turning over a printed ballot to vote both sides should be at the bottom of the right hand column.  

• Use clear, simple language. Avoid election jargon such as “partisan.” Use active voice, and cast instructions positively rather than negatively. 

• Use accurate instructional illustrations. Using simple, clear illustrations that show clearly how to mark a ballot assists all voters, but especially helps low literacy voters. 

• Use informational icons (only). Some US jurisdictions include icons or symbols on the ballot for each party. However, such icons have been found to be distracting and confusing on ballots. Voters are more likely to make mistakes on ballots that include party icons. Icons should only be used to signal something the voter should pay specific attention to, such as special instructions or system warnings. 

• Use contrast and color functionally. Using color judiciously, consistently, and for specific conventions can help voters find their way through the ballot. For example, shading and contrast can be used effectively on print ballots to set one contest off from the next. In electronic voting systems, color can call out voters’ selections; designate forward or backward progress through a ballot; or under- or overvotes. 

• Decide what’s most important. When all of the text on a ballot looks the same, it can be difficult for the voter to identify what she should do and how to do it. Create a visual hierarchy that clearly sets out the different elements of the ballot design and supports voters’ voting activities.

Why is it so hard to produce a usable, well-designed ballot?

This form changed the world.

Miami-Dade presidential ballot from 2000, the "butterfly ballot"

The picture is of the so-called "butterfly ballot" from Miami-Dade County from the presidential election in 2000. It is called a "butterfly ballot" because of how the candidates for this office flow over onto the second page of a two-page spread. The designer of this  punch card ballot wanted to make the type large enough for her overwhelmingly older voting constituency. This caused the contest to flow to two pages. That caused the candidates to interlace across the two-page spread. The holes are meant for every other one to the left or every other one to the right. There are horizontal rules to call out the candidate pairs and arrows to point to the holes. If you use trifocals, and you're in a garage with bad lighting, or a high school gym where there's a lot of glare on the page, how might the alignment go for you? Also, it isn't hard to imagine a voter poking the first hole for the first candidate on the left. Then you must poke the second hole for the second candidate - right?

This intentional-but-ill-informed design caused people to vote in ways they had not intended. It caused enough voters to make mistakes that it changed the outcome of a federal election. Which, because this election happened in the US and it was to elect the president, changed the world. This is not unlike the butterfly of the Chaos Theory.



Democracy is a design problem

Whenever I tell people that I work in voting and election design, I get two questions. The first is, So, is there money to be made there? (No.) The second question is, Why is this so complicated?

The people who ask the second question usually have an answer to offer me, already. The solution, they say, is that there should be one voting system for the whole country. This would impose consistency that could be supported with standards, testing, and enforcement. But it isn't that simple.

By tradition, running elections falls to the states and counties by virtue of the 10th amendment to the US Constituion, which says that anything that isn't covered in the Constitution falls to the people. It is considered a "states' rights" issue. All the Constitution says about elections is that there will be such to elect people to offices. Later amendments say who can vote (15th - barring discrimination based on race or color; 19th - womens' suffrage; 24th - eliminating the requirement to have paid income taxes; 26th - establishing 18 years as the legal voting age). Nothing says anything about who determines what system to use. It falls to the states.

The multiplicity of voting systems is just one tiny slice of this wicked problem. As with other design problems, there are constraints. In the case of ballot design, there are several that interact: 

• Voting technology is a moving target, so standards and best practices always lag. 

• Election management systems are reprehensibly difficult to use. EMSs, into which databases of candidate filings and questions or measures must be poured to make ballots are so difficult that many county election officials just send their databases in to their voting system vendors to do the ballot layouts for them. 

• Design specifications and language for instructions are embedded in county and state election legislation. Type font, weight, and size, grid, and position of instructions are often specified in state election code. Election regulations also often include the exact wording of instructions. It's not uncommon for the instructions to have been written generations ago, in negative, threatening, passive voice. 

• Election directors are excellent public administrators but they're not trained designers. In most of the 3,000 or so counties in the US, the people who run elections are county clerks or registrars who handle vital records such as birth certificates. Most are women, who, on average have held that job for 20 years. They usually are not tech savants, but they don't fear tech, either. They are busy, burdened, and budgetless. Elections have become more and more complicated to administer. Even if they could use InDesign to lay out their ballots, they're not trained designers. For many, a "usable" ballot is one that can be counted accurately by the voting system. And they want to keep costs as low as possible. Printing, mailing, upgrades, bug fixing, translations, storage -- all this costs money. 

• Ballot templates are issued at the state level. It is typical for the secretary of state, as the head of elections, to issue what's called a "ballot template" for state and federal elections. These also come from people who aren't trained designers and don't take into account the things that can happen when county and municipal contests are added to the ballot. They might not make room for multiple languages. They rarely put ballots through usability testing before live testing on Election Day. 

• Municipal and county districts overlap to create what are called "ballot styles." For example, there are places in Washington State where you could possibly have a unique ballot. There -- as in many voting jurisdictions throughout the US -- many lower level contests are included in the ballot, from school board to cemetery commission. The boundaries for those districts have been drawn in dozens of different ways. The right combination could draw a circle around your house. And yet, the county election official must ensure that you get to vote on exactly the contests you are entitled to. For this reason, some counties end up generating hundreds of ballot styles as different levels of districts overlap.

Poor ballot design affects the outcome of elections

When ballots are badly designed, voters get frustrated. People lose confidence in elections. Supporting elections on Election Day becomes difficult for poll workers.

All voters are affected by poor ballot designs. Older voters, first time voters, some minorities, and voters who have less education are very likely to make mistakes that prevent them from voting as they intend. Even white, wealthy, educated voters make mistakes on ballots. That's what happened in 2000. 

Although the butterfly ballot became the emblem for bad ballot design, we continue to see ballot design problems, both in paper ballots and on electronic touch screen systems. Technology has introduced more design problems. It has not solved them.


Voting: the 233-year-old design problem
There are best practice guidelines, commissioned by the US Election Assistance Commission from AIGA's Design for Democracy project, that are evidence-based. Voting system manufacturers are gradually supporting more and more of the guidelines, as local election officials demand it. States are updating election code to loosen design requirements. Local election officials embrace these changes. Although change can be difficult, these particular changes can make the jobs of local election officials easier because the voter's franchise is more likely to be protected with every design improvement.

Design can change the world. This is our superpower. We can affect the accuracy and accessibility of elections. But there aren't nearly enough people who are interested in civic design. Join the movement at the most important panel in the Free World, at South by Southwest in Austin on Monday, March 14 at 3:30 Central time. (Follow #uxvote on Twitter.) There we'll have on hand Dana Debeauvoir, county clerk from Travis County, Texas with Ric Grefe, the executive director of AIGA and the Design for Democracy project, along with Larry Norden, a civil rights lawyer and senior counsel for the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU. I'll be moderating. See you there. And at poll worker training for the next election.

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! 

Dear New York, please let me correct my ballot

The Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) Voting and Usability Project and the Brennan Center for Justice are urging the New York State Board of Elections to change the interaction and a message on the state's new voting systems.

Today, the New York Times joined the discussion in an editorial.

The issue: New York is changing from using mechanical lever machines to optical scan ballots. This change is good. However, with New York's particular ways of voting that include cumulative voting, it seems likely that some voters will vote too many times in a given contest. Florida saw some of this with a similar configuration; after some counties changed the system configuration to return overvoted ballots to voters, overvotes went down while the number of ballots cast remained constant.

Right now, the systems are configured to hold the ballot in the tabulator when it detects an overvote or undervote, while showing the voter a message on a small screen.

  The message voters get when they mark their ballots for too many candidates on a contest, while the tabulator holds the ballot

This would be remedied by a clear message from the tabulating machine as it pushes the ballot back out for the voter to review and change, if she wants. But these systems hold the ballot while the voter reads a poorly worded message to decide what to do. 

The New York State Board of Elections argues that the tabulator returning the ballots automatically will slow voting. The Brennan Center and UPA argue that when the machine holds the ballots, voters are more likely to let the flawed ballot be cast. This means that vote on that contest will not count, which is likely to disenfranchise thousands of voters and call results into question.

Ballot Design Still Matters

By Lawrence Norden – 11/10/09

[Reprinted with permission from http://www.brennancenter.org/blog/archives/ballot_design_still_matters/]

We've devoted a number of blog posts to the effects of poor ballot design, whether on touch-screens or paper ballots. In fact, we've collected a fairly large amount of data to make the case that bad design may be the single biggest cause of lost votes in recent elections.

Last week's election presents more evidence, if any was needed, of the potentially disenfranchising effects of poor design. As a political blog in Seattle noted, a poorly-designed ballot probably caused as many as 40,000 King County voters to miss a property tax State Ballot Initiative.  As you can see from this picture of the ballot:


 
The contest was placed immediately below the instructions and to the left of all other contests -- very easy for voters to miss. What can election officials do to avoid these kinds of mistakes in the future? Well, one thing is to use design checklists, like those provided by the Design for Democracy and the Brennan Center. But I'm not sure that in this case, either of those checklists would have alerted officials in King County to the problem. (While both checklists emphasize the importance of consistency in presentation -- and having all contests except one to the right of the instructions is certainly inconsistent -- I'm afraid this direction would have been too general to provide sufficient warning for many officials).

And while it's easy, in retrospect, to say this problem should have been obvious, I don't think that's fair. Such problems are almost never obvious beforehand. Election officials and others working on forms are usually on tight deadlines, trying to get the ballots to fit into limited space and ensuring that everything and every name is correct. Even if they are only focused on how a design might confuse voters, they are often so familiar with the design that they're blind to problems; for the very same reason that it's often so difficult to spot one's own typos.


What probably would have alerted officials to this problem ahead of time, and at little or no cost, would have been a simple usability test: observing ten or fifteen King County citizens as they "voted" on the ballot before the design was finalized. This solution is simple, easy and cheap. The Usability Professionals Association has a great explanation of how it's done.

If county officials watched a dozen people fill out the ballot, at least a couple might have accidentally skipped the ballot initiative. And, with that, officials would have been alerted to the fact that their ballot contained a serious flaw.

The ballot eventually got it's usability test, of course...but on Election Day. And approximately 40,000 voters showed -- a little too late -- that this particular ballot design failed.

Plain language makes a difference: Voters are more likely to vote as they intend when ballot instructions are simple and clear

How well do voters and poll workers understand the language of ballots and voting system instructions?

Today the National Institute of Standards and Technology released its report of a carefully controlled quantitative study in which 45 US adults over a range of ages and education levels each voted two ballots that differed only in the wording and presentation of the ballot instructions. The participants also discussed and compared specific pages from the two ballots. Janice (Ginny) Redish, Ph.D. led the study. She found that:

• Voters voted more accurately on a ballot with plain language instructions than on a ballot with traditional instructions.

• Voters with less education made more errors in voting.

• Voters could tell the difference and preferred the plain language ballot by a wide margin.

See the full report here: http://vote.nist.gov/NISTIR-7556.pdf, or go to vote.nist.gov/docmap.htm.

Technology as a solution in 1957: "Behind the Freedom Curtain"

This 1957 film housed in the Internet Archives in the Prelinger Archives is a tutorial on how mechanical lever machines work -- with a little chauvinistic flag-waving thrown in for good measure. It is very much a period piece (remember HUAC?), but also does a good job of explaining the kinds of mistakes that voters make on paper ballots. The Automatic Voting Machine Co. that made the film makes the case that those mistakes can't be made on the lever machine. See: http://www.archive.org/details/Behindth1957.

Go from that film to the results of a review of the November 2008 election in Florida, where 15 counties switched from direct record electronic (DRE) voting machines to paper, optical scan ballots. Twice as many ballots were rejected in 2008 than were rejected in 2004. But still, the rejection rate was 0.75%, well below the 2.9% in 2000, and below the "expected" residual vote rate of about 1% on average. From the New York Times on February 26, 2009:

The final report sent to state lawmakers showed that 0.75 percent, or 63,680 of the 8.39 million ballots cast in Florida, did not count in the presidential race. Barack Obama defeated John McCain in Florida by more than 236,000 votes. In the presidential race four years earlier, the rate of uncounted ballots was 0.41 percent, equating to about 31,000 votes.

Read the whole New York Times article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/26/us/26florida.html?nl=pol&emc=pola1.

In 2004, George W. Bush defeated John Kerry in Florida by 380,978 votes. In 2000, Al Gore received 543,895 more individual votes nationally than George W. Bush, but Bush received more electoral votes. In Florida in 2000, the margin of victory was 0.0092%, in favor of Bush. (See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2000 and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2004.)

Ever onward: A hope for continued progress in election reform

The Bush Administration spurred major election reform in the US. This reform movement included technology, security, and accessibility. It urged improvements in plain language in public documents, transparency in process, and alternative ways and days for voting.

Election reform has resulted in some great things: ability to vote for many who were unable to vote independently before; examination of steps in the process that hadn’t received much attention before, such as recounts and record-keeping; research-based improvements in ballot design – and much more.

But there is more yet to be done. Many voters are disenfranchised – still – by suboptimal design and the lack of usability in election materials they receive, voting machines they use, ballots they mark. Here’s hoping that the new administration continues to see election reform as a priority and continues and expands funding for research sponsored by the federal government that will result in easier, more accurate voting.

-- Dana Chisnell

Note: This post reflects the views of the person who wrote and posted it. It does not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Usability Professionals' Association or its individual members.

Come hear: UPAers on ballot usability, plain language, and evaluating doc for poll workers

Several of us on the Usability in Civic Life Project at the Usability Professionals' Association will be speaking at events in 2009 on topics that we hope elections officials, design practitioners, and human factors researchers are interested in. The dates, places, events, topic titles, and speakers are listed below.

Date	Place	Event	Topic title	Speakers
Feb 6	Washington, DC	NASED	Usability Testing Ballots	Dana Chisnell
May 3-6	Atlanta, GA	STC	Rewriting the Voting Experience On Election Day	Susan Becker, Ginny Redish, Whitney Quesenbery, Josie Scott, Sarah Swierenga, Dana Chisnell
June 12	Portland, OR	UPA	Improving the User Experience of Voting	Ginny Redish, Dana Chisnell, Sharon Laskowski, Svetlana Lowry
July 7-11	Spokane, WA	IACREOT	Improving the User Experience of Voting	Dana Chisnell
July 19-24	San Diego, CA	HCI International	User Experience in Elections: Poll Workers	Dana Chisnell, Karen Bachmann

Testing ballots, getting ready for November

A few of us working on the Usability Professional's Association Usability in Civic Life Project have been working with the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU to conduct usability testing of ballots that are being prepared for the November election. See one story here: http://usabilitytestinghowto.blogspot.com/2008/09/usability-testing-in-wild-ballots.html

Call to action: Volunteer to test or be a poll worker

Much of the content on this blog comes from people on the Usability Professionals' Association (UPA) Usability and Voting Project. We're gearing up now to help local elections officials test their ballots and other election materials for usability for the November election.

Ballots are being defined and designed now. Most have to be completed within a few weeks.

Want to help test ballots for usability? Step up! We'd love to have you. Questions? Write to us at voting@usabilityprofessionals.org.


In the meantime, a few pointers about working on elections.

1. Usability and Voting is non-partisan
First, and most importantly, this is a non-partisan effort. Whatever our personal political beliefs, they stay separate from this work. You can read our ethics guidelines for usability and design professionals on http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/civiclife/voting/ethics.html

2. Sign up to be a poll worker
We know that it’s hard to find time to volunteer. But there is something that everyone in the US can do that takes just a day (or part of a day) of your time. Sign up to be a poll worker. With record turnout expected this November, new poll workers are needed more than ever to meet the target of 2 million poll workers set by the EAC. To find out how to be a poll worker, contact your local elections office or visit http://www.eac.gov/voter/poll%20workers

3. Volunteer to help your local election officials with usability testing
One way to help ensure that ballots get a good usability test is to volunteer to run the test yourself. If you do:

• Please use the LEO Usability Testing Kit. Every election official has received a printed copy of the report, and it would be useful – especially in this first wave -- if we all used the materials they have already been introduced to, and spoke with one voice. Plus, your feedback will help improve the Kit. http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/civiclife/voting/leo_testing.html
  
  
• Remember that election officials are in the middle of their busiest, highest pressure work period – final preparations for a highly volatile presidential election. This is a time to offer to help, not offer blame.
  
  
• Don't be discouraged if they say "not this time" – offer to contact them again in the spring for the off-season elections.
  
  
• Before you make any recommendations, take a look at the EAC's Best Practices Guidelines for ballot designs as well as the recommendations in the Brennan Center report, Better Ballots. But, don't be surprised if you are told that it "can't be done". Not only do many voting systems have limitations that can get in the way, but elections are governed by state laws and regulations, as well as expectations from current practice. See http://www.eac.gov/election/effective-polling-place-designs and http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/better_ballots/
  

4. Keep in touch
Let us know if you have any contacts with elections folks. We're trying to keep track of any usability work, so we can get a full picture of the impact of our efforts.


We'll be happy to talk to anyone who is interested, and support them in any way we can. Our goal is to make better design and usability part of every aspect of elections, integrated into the normal processes.


Links:
LEO Usability Testing Kit
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/civiclife/voting/leo_testing.html

Ethics guidelines for usability and design professionals working in elections
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/civiclife/voting/ethics.html

Information about being a poll worker
http://www.eac.gov/voter/poll%20workers

EAC Effective Polling Place Designs
http://www.eac.gov/election/effective-polling-place-designs

EAC Election Management Guidelines
http://www.eac.gov/election/quick-start-management-guides

Brennan Center for Justice report Better Ballots
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/better_ballots/

UPA’s Voting and Usability Project
http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/civiclife/voting/
voting@usabilityprofessionals.org.

UPA Voting and Usability Project members contribute to Brennan Center Better Ballots report

On July 21 the Brennan Center for Justice at New York University School of Law released a report called Better Ballots. The report, which includes contributions by Whitney Quesenbery along with UPA members Dana Chisnell, Caroline Jarrett, Ginny Redish, Josephine Scott, and Sarah Swierenga, illustrates and explains 13 classic ballot design problems that caused serious problems in real elections, including the presidential election in 2000.

Plain Language Passes the House

A mandate for plain language in federal government communications is one step closer after the US House passed the Braley Plain Language bill last week. While this may not directly require plain language in voting materials and ballots, it certainly strengthens our argument.

A similar bill, S 2291, has moved out of committee into the full Senate.

More information: http://federaltimes.com/index.php?S=3479845

Ohio Officals Test Ballots for Weather But Did They Test for Design Problems?

National Public Radio reports that Ohio election officials are braced for the worst because they have been asked to implement a new optical scan system in an impossibly short time frame (two months.) To prevent disaster, some local officials even left ballots out in the damp, tore them, spilled coffee on them, all in a effort to make sure that their equipment will handle all possible voting conditions.

In one of the most populous counties, Cuyahoga County, a locus of problems with touch screen systems in the past, officials were not able to deploy enough optical scan counters for every precinct. They will implement a complicated central count process that will involve halting precinct voting and transporting ballots to the central count location during the voting day, NPR reports.

All of this complexity has election officials working double overtime to make sure things work smoothly for the closely-watched Tuesday primary.

Unfortunately, we do not have evidence that officials have asked real people to test these ballots to make sure that a ballot design flaw does not cause them problems later. The article does not mention any attempt to make certain that the ballots do not have some hidden flaw like the unnecessary “extra box” on primary ballots in Los Angeles County that may be responsible for thousands of spoiled ballots. (See Ballots Not Counted in LA Primary Because "Extra Box" Not Marked, Feb. 8).

Election officials should be concerned. We know that voters will not have the benefit of feedback they would get when the counter rejects a ballot that has an error. Voters will not get a second chance to correct their mistakes. If there is a hidden problem -- one that might have been revealed and fixed by usability testing -- state and local election officials will be under fire once again.

We hope we are wrong; we welcome any news that election officials tested the ballot not just for accuracy and poor voting conditions, but for vote-ability. We also hope that voters understand the instructions, are able to vote the ballot properly, and have their vote counted with confidence.

Usability testing is one way to help ensure that confidence.

More information http://www.npr.org/templates/story/
story.php?storyId=87809221&ft=1&f=1012

California Ballots Still Being Counted

A combination of flaws in the Feb. 5 California primary ballots has resulted in a vote count that continues, according to the New York Times. It reports that “election officials say a combination of high turnout, technology flaws and millions of mailed-in and dropped-off ballots have led to painstakingly slow returns in some counties, with nearly 800,000 ballots remaining to be processed.”

Among the problems noted by the Times:

• In Los Angeles County, 205,000 ballots were waiting to be tallied. Some 49,000 of those are being examined because voters failed to mark a bubble indicating the party they wished to vote for, but properly marked a vote for a candidate. (Some consider that “extra bubble” to be a design flaw that was incorporated when the ballot was adapted from punch card, but unnecessary for this election.)
• Absentee ballots in Contra Costa County are being ironed so that they can be fed into the vote-counting machines.
• Damage from warehousing the ballots, weather and mishandling by voters means that some ballots have to be handled with special, time-consuming care.
• High turnouts are overwhelming the already-stressed election officials, who must juggle three major elections this year.

More: (may require registration)
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/17/us/politics/17vote.html
?_r=1&sq=california%20primary%20ballots&st=nyt&adxnnl=1&oref=slogin&
scp=1&adxnnlx=1203429495-hjwTTFk69FtX/kieWsuWlg

Ballots Not Counted in LA Primary Because "Extra Box" Not Marked

In addition to the normal confusion over voting in presidential primaries, the New York Times notes that some independent Los Angeles County voters did not have their vote counted because they failed to mark "an extra box" on their ballot.

http://tinyurl.com/2hp9tp
(Registration may be required.)

The article notes "One of the more significant problems occurred in Los Angeles County, where independent voters in at least 15 precincts said they were never told they had to mark an extra box on their ballots for them to be counted."

PROPOSED FED PLAIN LANGUAGE RULES COULD HELP ELECTIONS, TOO

An important part of ballot usability relates to the use of language: on the ballot, in the polling materials and instructions for both voters and precinct workers. A bill before US Congress can have an impact: The Plain Language Bills, S2291 and HR 3548, require that US government communications - including "letter, publication, form, notice, or instruction" -- likely including balloting materials -- be presented in clear, easy-to-understand language.

The Usability Professionals' Association has submitted a letter endorsing this initiative. You can let your US Congress member and Senator know that you support the Plain Language bill as well. Visit http://www.senate.gov and http://www.congress.org.

The UPA Letter of Support: http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/about_upa/
for_the_press/press_releases/press.080128.html

More information about Plain Language and government: http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/civiclife/access/
plain_language.html
http://www.plainlanguage.gov