9 ms·

Butterfly Effects: Ballot design

89 points by misnamed 10y ago

mamurphy 10y ago
I had been aware of the hanging chads in the Bush-Gore election, but I had not seen the butterfly ballot design itself. In such a close race, many voters likely voted for Buchanan when intending to vote for Gore... crazy.
- misnamed 10y ago
  What really blows my mind is that Buchanan himself conceded the point - he said very clearly he thinks the ballot design accounted for him getting a bigger percentage in districts that used it.
CharlesMerriam2 10y ago
To cast a free and fair election, we should run a good election. Perhaps a standard ballot design could be required in all states?
- binarymax 10y ago
  The problem is that voting machines are a competitive system sold to various levels of government. At the state level, there are different requirements, but not unified at the federal level [0]. Due to the differences, there cannot be a single mandated design, as the voting machine companies are not required to be consistent from state to state. There is lots of history here, which I haven't gotten very far into, but I think most would agree that reform and consistency would solve these problems. That wouldn't benefit the voting machine company profits though, so there is huge push-back. [0] https://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Page/State%20Requirements%20and%20the%20Federal%20Voting%20System%20Testing%20and%20Certification%20Program.pdf https://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Page/State%20Requirements%20and...
- mjmahone17 10y ago
  How do you deal with states that have propositions vs. states that don't? What about states without bicameral legislatures [0]? Or states where a single candidate can run for multiple parties [1]? The reason you can't have a standard ballot design is because states don't have standardized races or systems. And so long as the US is a federation, you really wouldn't want to have all states with the same electoral system. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska_Legislature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska_Legislature [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fusion
  - mynameisvlad 10y ago
    Just because there's one standard design doesn't mean that each state won't have slightly different requirements; it just means that the design of the standard ballot would have to incorporate those requirements.
  - flukus 10y ago
    Multiple ballot papers.
firasd 10y ago
This article has a clearer image of the Florida 2000 ballot: http://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html http://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html Also, good podcast interview about the post-vote legal wrangling https://soundcloud.com/candidate-confessional/the-man-who-tried-to-help-al https://soundcloud.com/candidate-confessional/the-man-who-tr... And another podcast specifically on the issue of ballot design: https://www.relay.fm/presentable/11 https://www.relay.fm/presentable/11
- nitrogen 10y ago
  That ballot could definitely be designed better even without changing the machine design (e.g. funnels pointing toward the valid hole), but if the arrows were clearly visible on the actual ballots, doesn't that say something about the level of awareness of some of the voters?
  - Retric 10y ago
    Look at this: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5291/5481639542_1e342a5f69_b.jpg https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5291/5481639542_1e342a5f69_b.j... Now, we might get that correct 99% of the time. But, in close elections 1% is meaningful.
    - nitrogen 10y ago
      That does make it look much worse.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Of course. But so what? Do we want people's votes to be counted differently from what they wanted just because they were less than entirely aware of little details of the ballot design?
    - nitrogen 10y ago
      Naturally in a democratic republic we want every vote to be counted correctly. I was trying to say that we also need to work on our collective awareness, especially around critical things like voting.
niftich 10y ago
I'm surprised how on discussions about the 'butterfly ballot', the impact of the viewing angle is rarely mentioned. See these images [1][2][3] that show that as the viewing angle deviates further from top-down, the recessed spine that holds the circular marks to be punched gets misaligned from the arrows that are supposed to be pointing to the proper spot. As the ballot was installed on a stand at approximately chest-height [4] (it's really hard to find a picture of a person standing at it -- does anyone have one?), shorter people had a more oblique view making the arrows more likely to get misaligned. [1] http://www.washington.edu/news/files/2016/03/3479146036_dda3e36872_b-1.jpg http://www.washington.edu/news/files/2016/03/3479146036_dda3... [2] https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5291/5481639542_1e342a5f69_b.jpg https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5291/5481639542_1e342a5f69_b.j... [3] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Butterfly_Voters_View.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Butterfl... [4] http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~jcAAOSw~bFWOQO0/s-l1600.jpg http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~jcAAOSw~bFWOQO0/s-l1600.jpg
- bouncingsoul 10y ago
  ATMs have the same problem with viewing angles. It's funny with those too because that interface will always be used at extreme angles: From above (potentially) when a person is standing at an ATM, from straight on if they happen to match the ATM's screen height, and from below if someone is sitting in their car. A good case for touch screens, where the label is the interaction point.
  - ygra 10y ago
    Never seen an ATM to be used from a car, but as for touch screens, many of those have severe alignment problems that would get even worse due to parallax when used from wildly different viewing angles. Requires you to have even larger buttons to counteract that or frustration sets in where people constantly get the impression their touches don't register (just because they manage to hit slightly below the button). ATMs I tend to use have the following design: https://www.sparkasse-einbeck.de/module/aktion_if/wunsch-pin/pixel/wunsch_pin_1.jpg https://www.sparkasse-einbeck.de/module/aktion_if/wunsch-pin... with a row of four large physical buttons to the left and right of the screen. It's impossible to get a viewing angle extreme enough that this gets ambiguous.
Kenji 10y ago
In Switzerland, people write themselves Yes or No in the appropriate field, or they write the names of the people they vote for (misspellings will still be counted, unless two candidates have similar names and it's hard to make out which one was meant). How hard can ballot design be? Not hard, if you're not trying too hard.
- npstr 10y ago
  We're talking about 'murica here...
  - komali2 10y ago
    America also doesn't have a national language, and ballots are going out in Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, etc.
    - mynameisvlad 10y ago
      "Your vote will only be counted if you write 'YES' or 'NO' in the space provided." "Su voto sólo se contará si escribe 'YES' o 'NO' en el espacio proporcionado." "phiếu bầu của bạn sẽ chỉ được tính nếu bạn viết 'YES' hoặc 'NO' trong không gian được cung cấp." "如果你写您的投票将只能算作“YES”或“NO”的空间提供。" Google Translate used, so these translations are probably wrong. But the concept is the same; you only accept a particular response and provide instructions in the native language on how to respond correctly. All other responses are discarded.
      - komali2 10y ago
        I suppose. It sounds like there'd be a lot of havoc over having people write "yes" or "no" vs "si" or "no," that's kind of what I was thinking would cause the problems.
- burkaman 10y ago
  "misspellings count unless it's hard to tell" This sounds like you're just asking for controversy. You'll always be able to find someone with bad handwriting whose vote was missed, or someone who wrote in "Democrat" instead of the name, or "Si" instead of "Yes", or something. Also, this makes automated counting out of the question. It seems almost obvious to me that having people fill in a circle is much better than having them write out whole words. Florida's design was bad, but this would be worse.
lordnacho 10y ago
Why aren't there more modern systems that use a weight of some sort? Easy to measure in multiple ways (weigh the container, clicker that counts entered balls), anonymous, hard to misunderstand. That way we can have the result immediately. For postal votes it appears you're not anonymous anyway, so no harm in the returning officer dropping a ball in for you. The Florida 2000 thing is a recipe for disaster. Who's ever heard of a weird fold-in-the-middle ballot that you have to punch a hole in?
- evan_ 10y ago
  > For postal votes it appears you're not anonymous anyway The vote-by-mail ballots we have in Oregon come with two envelopes: An envelope printed with your name and address; and a slightly smaller envelope with no identifying markings. You put your completed ballot in the "secret" envelope and you put that envelope in the larger envelope. Assuming everything goes correctly, the name and signature on the outer envelope is verified against the voter role. If it's a valid vote, the envelope is opened and the ballot envelope is placed in a secure place. Later, on election day, the ballot envelopes are opened and the ballots are read electronically. There's a risk that the vote-counter may open both envelopes but it doesn't seem like there's a bigger risk with that than there is with other voting methods. There is a bigger potential risk of intimidation- e.g. a company saying to its employees "bring us your ballot so we can verify that you voted correctly". I don't know how you solve that.
  - mikeash 10y ago
    Intimidation could be avoided by allowing a voter to send in a ballot multiple times, with only the last one counted, or allow them to void their mail-in vote by visiting in person on election day.
  - JoshTriplett 10y ago
    > There is a bigger potential risk of intimidation- e.g. a company saying to its employees "bring us your ballot so we can verify that you voted correctly". I don't know how you solve that. Ask anyone who receives such intimidation to report it to their state/federal election commission for prosecution. Voter intimidation is a federal felony, and typically against state law as well.
a-priori 10y ago
The root cause of a lot of this is how complex ballots are in American elections. For comparison, this is what a ballot looks like in a Canadian federal election: http://www.capyouthvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ballot.jpg http://www.capyouthvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ballo... The reason ours are simpler is because the elections are simpler: we just elect our local member of parliament. At the federal and provincial levels, that's the only decision to make in an election. We don't vote for senators or judges or any other offices at these levels. Instead, these are appointed by parliament. The municipal elections have the most options because there we elect mayors, city councillors and school board trustees. But they're still just paper "put an X next to the name" ballots that are manually counted.
- Asooka 10y ago
  Even if you have 10 candidates, how hard is it to just list them on a sheet of paper with a nice big box to draw an X in next to each. The computer can then just scan the boxes and see which one has a big X in it.
  - LeChuck 10y ago
    Seems to work fine here in the Netherlands, and we have a bit more than ten candidates. http://i.imgur.com/pdW1ZTe.jpg http://i.imgur.com/pdW1ZTe.jpg
- koenigdavidmj 10y ago
  The federal portion is pretty small in an American election too, three races at most. President every four years, one congressman every two years, one senator at a time (six year terms, but they are staggered so a state's senators get elected in different cycles). At the federal level, we don't vote for judges or referenda or anything like that. On the other hand, my state is vote by mail, so no tricky machines. Just drawing a line to complete an arrow, then mailing it back in. Pretty hard to screw up.
SamBam 10y ago
Compare and contrast: This City of Austin ballot question: https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6679117/Screen%20Shot%202016-06-20%20at%203.05.27%20PM.png https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6679117/S... The Brexit ballot: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160621144335-uk-referendum-on-eu-brexit-ballot-paper-vote-large-tease.jpg http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160621144335-uk-... Can anyone (who hasn't seen it before) easily explain what a vote in the Austin example would do? From http://www.vox.com/2016/6/23/11979522/brexit-ballot http://www.vox.com/2016/6/23/11979522/brexit-ballot: A study of more than 1,200 state-level ballot questions that voters across the US were asked to approve between 1997 and 2007 found that, on average, they were written at a 17th-grade level — in other words, you’d need more than a four-year college degree in order to understand what you were being asked to vote on. In response, many voters just skipped those questions altogether: A more complex ballot question led to a 5 percent decrease in participation. On about one-quarter of all ballot questions studied, that was larger than the margin between victory and defeat. Confusing language actually could have changed the outcome of the race.
- maxerickson 10y ago
  I've never seen it before. Read it for ~30 seconds. Vote yes to repeal the existing ordinance that requires background checks and to install an ordinance that smooths the way for corporate ride finding companies. I can see an argument for splitting the various issues out more though.
  - burkaman 10y ago
    At least one other commenter so far thought "for the ordinance" meant for the capital O ordinance, the one they're considering repealing. I agree with your interpretation, but I'm not totally convinced we're right.
- filoeleven 10y ago
  In PA we have a ballot question that reads, "Shall the Pennsylvania Constitution be amended to require that justices of the Supreme Court, judges, and magisterial district judges be retired on the last day of the calendar year in which they attain the age of 75 years?" If you think that forcing judges to retire at a certain age is a good idea, you will be inclined to vote "yes". The problem is that PA already has mandatory retirement for judges, only at age 70. So the way that the question is phrased is very misleading, and could easily lead to PA raising the retirement age for judges from 70 to 75 despite voter intent to the contrary.
muxxa 10y ago
Although only tangentially related to this article, the big thing I see missing from discussions of voting systems in the US (and UK) is the fact that you are only allowed to express a single top preference for one candidate. What is the Buchanan supporter to do in 2000? Vote for their top preference in the knowledge that they have no chance of getting elected (given that he is well behind in third or worse place in the polls), or vote for their least worst candidate from the two front runners. If instead, the voter was allowed rank their candidates in order of preference, with their vote going to their #2 preference after Buchanan is eliminated, their voting intent could be clearly recorded. Imagine if there was no need for republican or democrat primaries, as each party could field multiple candidates, as e.g. all republican votes would still end up going to the top republican candidate after less popular (to the public) republican candidates are eliminated. The system I'm most familiar with which implements this is Single Transferrable Vote [1] and isn't a pipe dream but is used effectively in multiple countries (albeit not in a presidential vote that I know of). If such a system were in place in the US I believe it would reduce the extreme polarisation that is obvious to me in U.S politics and also I think could enable a third major party to grow slowly over the course of multiple election cycles, or indeed make it conceivable that e.g. (current election) a major pro-immigration faction within the Republican Party could split to form a new party without the prospect of electoral annihilation, which I believe is why that is inconceivable. There are degrees of democracy and for me the STV system is just vastly more democratic, more akin to how people initially express their ideal position at the start of a debate, but then still get a say as the debate progresses and they realise they need to compromise and support the next best outcome of their first preference is untenable to a majority of others. [edit] To get back to the point of the article, I think that entering '1', '2', '3' beside candidates names is a lot clearer than the traditional tick or 'X' (which could be reasonably interpreted to mean NOT this candidate!). Filling up every space with a number is a great way to ensure someone can't easily modify/spoil your vote by e.g. adding an extra 'x' in one of the remaining empty spaces. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote
- fryguy 10y ago
  Unfortunately STV has the same problems as first-pass-the-post, and some actually worse ones. Which is unfortunate, because people don't understand that and think it's much better. http://www.rangevoting.org/Irvtalk.html http://www.rangevoting.org/Irvtalk.html
kirykl 10y ago
The most effectively designed ballot for its purpose was probably the one used to decide the Anschluss referendum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_Anschluss_referendum,_1938 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_Anschluss_referendu...
kalleboo 10y ago
With bad ballot design/wording, voting on a weekday, reportedly long lines (read something about a 4 hour wait in places yesterday!), the lack of valid ID among potential voters, first past the post and out-of-control gerrymandering, why does the US have such trouble carrying out elections?

89 points by misnamed 10y ago

I had been aware of the hanging chads in the Bush-Gore election, but I had not seen the butterfly ballot design itself. In such a close race, many voters likely voted for Buchanan when intending to vote for Gore... crazy.

misnamed 10y ago
What really blows my mind is that Buchanan himself conceded the point - he said very clearly he thinks the ballot design accounted for him getting a bigger percentage in districts that used it.

CharlesMerriam2 10y ago

To cast a free and fair election, we should run a good election. Perhaps a standard ballot design could be required in all states?

binarymax 10y ago
The problem is that voting machines are a competitive system sold to various levels of government. At the state level, there are different requirements, but not unified at the federal level [0]. Due to the differences, there cannot be a single mandated design, as the voting machine companies are not required to be consistent from state to state. There is lots of history here, which I haven't gotten very far into, but I think most would agree that reform and consistency would solve these problems. That wouldn't benefit the voting machine company profits though, so there is huge push-back. [0] https://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Page/State%20Requirements%20and%20the%20Federal%20Voting%20System%20Testing%20and%20Certification%20Program.pdf https://www.eac.gov/assets/1/Page/State%20Requirements%20and...
mjmahone17 10y ago
How do you deal with states that have propositions vs. states that don't? What about states without bicameral legislatures [0]? Or states where a single candidate can run for multiple parties [1]? The reason you can't have a standard ballot design is because states don't have standardized races or systems. And so long as the US is a federation, you really wouldn't want to have all states with the same electoral system. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska_Legislature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nebraska_Legislature [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fusion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electoral_fusion
- mynameisvlad 10y ago
  Just because there's one standard design doesn't mean that each state won't have slightly different requirements; it just means that the design of the standard ballot would have to incorporate those requirements.
- flukus 10y ago
  Multiple ballot papers.

firasd 10y ago

This article has a clearer image of the Florida 2000 ballot: http://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html http://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html Also, good podcast interview about the post-vote legal wrangling https://soundcloud.com/candidate-confessional/the-man-who-tried-to-help-al https://soundcloud.com/candidate-confessional/the-man-who-tr... And another podcast specifically on the issue of ballot design: https://www.relay.fm/presentable/11 https://www.relay.fm/presentable/11

nitrogen 10y ago
That ballot could definitely be designed better even without changing the machine design (e.g. funnels pointing toward the valid hole), but if the arrows were clearly visible on the actual ballots, doesn't that say something about the level of awareness of some of the voters?
- Retric 10y ago
  Look at this: https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5291/5481639542_1e342a5f69_b.jpg https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5291/5481639542_1e342a5f69_b.j... Now, we might get that correct 99% of the time. But, in close elections 1% is meaningful.
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    That does make it look much worse.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Of course. But so what? Do we want people's votes to be counted differently from what they wanted just because they were less than entirely aware of little details of the ballot design?
  - nitrogen 10y ago
    Naturally in a democratic republic we want every vote to be counted correctly. I was trying to say that we also need to work on our collective awareness, especially around critical things like voting.

niftich 10y ago

I'm surprised how on discussions about the 'butterfly ballot', the impact of the viewing angle is rarely mentioned. See these images [1][2][3] that show that as the viewing angle deviates further from top-down, the recessed spine that holds the circular marks to be punched gets misaligned from the arrows that are supposed to be pointing to the proper spot. As the ballot was installed on a stand at approximately chest-height [4] (it's really hard to find a picture of a person standing at it -- does anyone have one?), shorter people had a more oblique view making the arrows more likely to get misaligned. [1] http://www.washington.edu/news/files/2016/03/3479146036_dda3e36872_b-1.jpg http://www.washington.edu/news/files/2016/03/3479146036_dda3... [2] https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5291/5481639542_1e342a5f69_b.jpg https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5291/5481639542_1e342a5f69_b.j... [3] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Butterfly_Voters_View.jpg https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Butterfl... [4] http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~jcAAOSw~bFWOQO0/s-l1600.jpg http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~jcAAOSw~bFWOQO0/s-l1600.jpg

bouncingsoul 10y ago
ATMs have the same problem with viewing angles. It's funny with those too because that interface will always be used at extreme angles: From above (potentially) when a person is standing at an ATM, from straight on if they happen to match the ATM's screen height, and from below if someone is sitting in their car. A good case for touch screens, where the label is the interaction point.
- ygra 10y ago
  Never seen an ATM to be used from a car, but as for touch screens, many of those have severe alignment problems that would get even worse due to parallax when used from wildly different viewing angles. Requires you to have even larger buttons to counteract that or frustration sets in where people constantly get the impression their touches don't register (just because they manage to hit slightly below the button). ATMs I tend to use have the following design: https://www.sparkasse-einbeck.de/module/aktion_if/wunsch-pin/pixel/wunsch_pin_1.jpg https://www.sparkasse-einbeck.de/module/aktion_if/wunsch-pin... with a row of four large physical buttons to the left and right of the screen. It's impossible to get a viewing angle extreme enough that this gets ambiguous.

Kenji 10y ago

In Switzerland, people write themselves Yes or No in the appropriate field, or they write the names of the people they vote for (misspellings will still be counted, unless two candidates have similar names and it's hard to make out which one was meant). How hard can ballot design be? Not hard, if you're not trying too hard.

npstr 10y ago
We're talking about 'murica here...
- komali2 10y ago
  America also doesn't have a national language, and ballots are going out in Spanish, Vietnamese, Chinese, etc.
  - mynameisvlad 10y ago
    "Your vote will only be counted if you write 'YES' or 'NO' in the space provided." "Su voto sólo se contará si escribe 'YES' o 'NO' en el espacio proporcionado." "phiếu bầu của bạn sẽ chỉ được tính nếu bạn viết 'YES' hoặc 'NO' trong không gian được cung cấp." "如果你写您的投票将只能算作“YES”或“NO”的空间提供。" Google Translate used, so these translations are probably wrong. But the concept is the same; you only accept a particular response and provide instructions in the native language on how to respond correctly. All other responses are discarded.
    - komali2 10y ago
      I suppose. It sounds like there'd be a lot of havoc over having people write "yes" or "no" vs "si" or "no," that's kind of what I was thinking would cause the problems.
burkaman 10y ago
"misspellings count unless it's hard to tell" This sounds like you're just asking for controversy. You'll always be able to find someone with bad handwriting whose vote was missed, or someone who wrote in "Democrat" instead of the name, or "Si" instead of "Yes", or something. Also, this makes automated counting out of the question. It seems almost obvious to me that having people fill in a circle is much better than having them write out whole words. Florida's design was bad, but this would be worse.

lordnacho 10y ago

Why aren't there more modern systems that use a weight of some sort? Easy to measure in multiple ways (weigh the container, clicker that counts entered balls), anonymous, hard to misunderstand. That way we can have the result immediately. For postal votes it appears you're not anonymous anyway, so no harm in the returning officer dropping a ball in for you. The Florida 2000 thing is a recipe for disaster. Who's ever heard of a weird fold-in-the-middle ballot that you have to punch a hole in?

evan_ 10y ago
> For postal votes it appears you're not anonymous anyway The vote-by-mail ballots we have in Oregon come with two envelopes: An envelope printed with your name and address; and a slightly smaller envelope with no identifying markings. You put your completed ballot in the "secret" envelope and you put that envelope in the larger envelope. Assuming everything goes correctly, the name and signature on the outer envelope is verified against the voter role. If it's a valid vote, the envelope is opened and the ballot envelope is placed in a secure place. Later, on election day, the ballot envelopes are opened and the ballots are read electronically. There's a risk that the vote-counter may open both envelopes but it doesn't seem like there's a bigger risk with that than there is with other voting methods. There is a bigger potential risk of intimidation- e.g. a company saying to its employees "bring us your ballot so we can verify that you voted correctly". I don't know how you solve that.
- mikeash 10y ago
  Intimidation could be avoided by allowing a voter to send in a ballot multiple times, with only the last one counted, or allow them to void their mail-in vote by visiting in person on election day.
- JoshTriplett 10y ago
  > There is a bigger potential risk of intimidation- e.g. a company saying to its employees "bring us your ballot so we can verify that you voted correctly". I don't know how you solve that. Ask anyone who receives such intimidation to report it to their state/federal election commission for prosecution. Voter intimidation is a federal felony, and typically against state law as well.

a-priori 10y ago

The root cause of a lot of this is how complex ballots are in American elections. For comparison, this is what a ballot looks like in a Canadian federal election: http://www.capyouthvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ballot.jpg http://www.capyouthvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ballo... The reason ours are simpler is because the elections are simpler: we just elect our local member of parliament. At the federal and provincial levels, that's the only decision to make in an election. We don't vote for senators or judges or any other offices at these levels. Instead, these are appointed by parliament. The municipal elections have the most options because there we elect mayors, city councillors and school board trustees. But they're still just paper "put an X next to the name" ballots that are manually counted.

Asooka 10y ago
Even if you have 10 candidates, how hard is it to just list them on a sheet of paper with a nice big box to draw an X in next to each. The computer can then just scan the boxes and see which one has a big X in it.
- LeChuck 10y ago
  Seems to work fine here in the Netherlands, and we have a bit more than ten candidates. http://i.imgur.com/pdW1ZTe.jpg http://i.imgur.com/pdW1ZTe.jpg
koenigdavidmj 10y ago
The federal portion is pretty small in an American election too, three races at most. President every four years, one congressman every two years, one senator at a time (six year terms, but they are staggered so a state's senators get elected in different cycles). At the federal level, we don't vote for judges or referenda or anything like that. On the other hand, my state is vote by mail, so no tricky machines. Just drawing a line to complete an arrow, then mailing it back in. Pretty hard to screw up.

SamBam 10y ago

Compare and contrast: This City of Austin ballot question: https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6679117/Screen%20Shot%202016-06-20%20at%203.05.27%20PM.png https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6679117/S... The Brexit ballot: http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160621144335-uk-referendum-on-eu-brexit-ballot-paper-vote-large-tease.jpg http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160621144335-uk-... Can anyone (who hasn't seen it before) easily explain what a vote in the Austin example would do? From http://www.vox.com/2016/6/23/11979522/brexit-ballot http://www.vox.com/2016/6/23/11979522/brexit-ballot: A study of more than 1,200 state-level ballot questions that voters across the US were asked to approve between 1997 and 2007 found that, on average, they were written at a 17th-grade level — in other words, you’d need more than a four-year college degree in order to understand what you were being asked to vote on. In response, many voters just skipped those questions altogether: A more complex ballot question led to a 5 percent decrease in participation. On about one-quarter of all ballot questions studied, that was larger than the margin between victory and defeat. Confusing language actually could have changed the outcome of the race.

maxerickson 10y ago
I've never seen it before. Read it for ~30 seconds. Vote yes to repeal the existing ordinance that requires background checks and to install an ordinance that smooths the way for corporate ride finding companies. I can see an argument for splitting the various issues out more though.
- burkaman 10y ago
  At least one other commenter so far thought "for the ordinance" meant for the capital O ordinance, the one they're considering repealing. I agree with your interpretation, but I'm not totally convinced we're right.
filoeleven 10y ago
In PA we have a ballot question that reads, "Shall the Pennsylvania Constitution be amended to require that justices of the Supreme Court, judges, and magisterial district judges be retired on the last day of the calendar year in which they attain the age of 75 years?" If you think that forcing judges to retire at a certain age is a good idea, you will be inclined to vote "yes". The problem is that PA already has mandatory retirement for judges, only at age 70. So the way that the question is phrased is very misleading, and could easily lead to PA raising the retirement age for judges from 70 to 75 despite voter intent to the contrary.

muxxa 10y ago

Although only tangentially related to this article, the big thing I see missing from discussions of voting systems in the US (and UK) is the fact that you are only allowed to express a single top preference for one candidate. What is the Buchanan supporter to do in 2000? Vote for their top preference in the knowledge that they have no chance of getting elected (given that he is well behind in third or worse place in the polls), or vote for their least worst candidate from the two front runners. If instead, the voter was allowed rank their candidates in order of preference, with their vote going to their #2 preference after Buchanan is eliminated, their voting intent could be clearly recorded. Imagine if there was no need for republican or democrat primaries, as each party could field multiple candidates, as e.g. all republican votes would still end up going to the top republican candidate after less popular (to the public) republican candidates are eliminated. The system I'm most familiar with which implements this is Single Transferrable Vote [1] and isn't a pipe dream but is used effectively in multiple countries (albeit not in a presidential vote that I know of). If such a system were in place in the US I believe it would reduce the extreme polarisation that is obvious to me in U.S politics and also I think could enable a third major party to grow slowly over the course of multiple election cycles, or indeed make it conceivable that e.g. (current election) a major pro-immigration faction within the Republican Party could split to form a new party without the prospect of electoral annihilation, which I believe is why that is inconceivable. There are degrees of democracy and for me the STV system is just vastly more democratic, more akin to how people initially express their ideal position at the start of a debate, but then still get a say as the debate progresses and they realise they need to compromise and support the next best outcome of their first preference is untenable to a majority of others. [edit] To get back to the point of the article, I think that entering '1', '2', '3' beside candidates names is a lot clearer than the traditional tick or 'X' (which could be reasonably interpreted to mean NOT this candidate!). Filling up every space with a number is a great way to ensure someone can't easily modify/spoil your vote by e.g. adding an extra 'x' in one of the remaining empty spaces. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote

fryguy 10y ago
Unfortunately STV has the same problems as first-pass-the-post, and some actually worse ones. Which is unfortunate, because people don't understand that and think it's much better. http://www.rangevoting.org/Irvtalk.html http://www.rangevoting.org/Irvtalk.html

kirykl 10y ago

The most effectively designed ballot for its purpose was probably the one used to decide the Anschluss referendum https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_Anschluss_referendum,_1938 https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_Anschluss_referendu...

kalleboo 10y ago

With bad ballot design/wording, voting on a weekday, reportedly long lines (read something about a 4 hour wait in places yesterday!), the lack of valid ID among potential voters, first past the post and out-of-control gerrymandering, why does the US have such trouble carrying out elections?