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I live in Austin and have been voting with these machines for the last 8 years, including earlier this week. The UI for the ballot is a series of rectangular t

I live in Austin and have been voting with these machines for the last 8 years, including earlier this week. The UI for the ballot is a series of rectangular tiles separated into two columns on a series of pages. Each tile represents a given race or proposition, with a title header, a description field, and then the various options to vote for stacked vertically as a collection of { radio button, option title }. In order to navigate between pages, there are two digital "arrow" buttons for "Next" and "Back". To navigate within a page, and then within a tile, there is a clicky scroll wheel (rotation quantized in something on the order of 30 degree increments). To make a selection there is a separate button digital button "Enter". The way the straight party selection is presented is as the first tile on the first page of partisan ballot options. Selecting straight party isn't a separate option on the underlying ballot; rather it is UI layer feature that fills in all of the partisan election options with the party of choice as if you had individually selected all of them. I've never experienced the phenomenon described in the article, but I can imagine how it might happen. There is visible latency in interactions (selecting an option, moving between options/pages) and I could imagine someone selecting the straight party choice, pressing "Enter", not seeing an immediate result and pressing Enter again while rotating the wheel, and then being confused when they see the first partisan election race not reflecting their vote because they inadvertently made another selection on that race. This seems like an easy thing to address and something that could/should have come up in UX usability testing. If anything should go through rigorous accessibility and usability testing, it should be voting processes (and that hold for whether elections are mediated by machines, paper ballots, or some other method).

Izkata 8y ago
Based on the "wait for all candidates to have loaded" description, I had a thought that no one else seems to have had yet, and you may be able to confirm it as a possibility: Do the names ever shift around? The thought is, lets say there's 3 candidates, Alex, Becky, and Carl, and they're supposed to show in that order. But due to the slow loading time, you first see Becky and Carl, then Alex loads in a moment later and the other two shift down. Since you've described the straight party selection as a separate button/option, the thought I had was, what if picking that is supposed to choose Becky, so Option 2. But if you hit it too soon, you've selected Becky as Option 1. And then Alex loads in and Becky becomes Option 2, but the vote didn't shift - it's still on Option 1. Does that sound like a possibility, with your experience with these machines?

Izkata 8y ago

Based on the "wait for all candidates to have loaded" description, I had a thought that no one else seems to have had yet, and you may be able to confirm it as a possibility: Do the names ever shift around? The thought is, lets say there's 3 candidates, Alex, Becky, and Carl, and they're supposed to show in that order. But due to the slow loading time, you first see Becky and Carl, then Alex loads in a moment later and the other two shift down. Since you've described the straight party selection as a separate button/option, the thought I had was, what if picking that is supposed to choose Becky, so Option 2. But if you hit it too soon, you've selected Becky as Option 1. And then Alex loads in and Becky becomes Option 2, but the vote didn't shift - it's still on Option 1. Does that sound like a possibility, with your experience with these machines?