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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 coun
by 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 agoWe're talking about 'murica here...
- komali2 10y agoAmerica 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 agoI 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.
- Kenji 10y agoNo, there was an article about it in the newspapers. It's actually really simple. If there is any doubt, it doesn't count. Otherwise, they'll count it as what you meant. It works beautifully.
- burkaman 10y agoOk, I just don't see how you can argue that's better than just filling in a circle next to your choice. Maybe you can say it's better than Florida's stupid hole punch thing, but I don't see a single advantage over filling in a single circle, and I see many disadvantages. It's way too easy to imagine someone losing an election by a tiny margin and finding hundreds of ballots that were thrown out but should arguably have counted for them. What is the benefit of this extra room for error? Who gets to decide when there is doubt? I am sure it works great, but I am also sure that the system most US states have at the moment is better.
- Kenji 10y agoStatistics have actually shown that only a very, very small part of votes was both misspelled and ambiguous in such a way that it became invalid.