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My locality uses ranked-choice voting for its city elections. It also uses paper ballots. While I believe philosophically that this is a far more representative

My locality uses ranked-choice voting for its city elections. It also uses paper ballots. While I believe philosophically that this is a far more representative way of voting, the ballot was laid out as a giant matrix of circles to fill in. It was pretty daunting, even for me. I could see that ballot leading to serious issues for the voting rights of the elderly. It's vital that the right type of ballot is chosen for this to really work. I almost feel that ranked-choice voting would need to go hand-in-hand with a switch to electronic voting machines (for a more clear and dynamic UI), which I'm philosophically against and comes with its own host of usability issues and problems with disenfranchisement. Hard to find a satisfying middle ground on this one. Has anyone come across a more reasonable paper ballot for this type of voting?

vatueil 7y ago
Even if we insist on preserving traditional hand-counting of counting paper ballots, for good or ill, couldn't we use electronic voting machines to fill out paper ballots?
crooked-v 7y ago
Some usability testing by FairVote suggests that the most usable ranked ballot design usable with existing scanning machines looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/oiBMZ22.jpg https://i.imgur.com/oiBMZ22.jpg
lambertsimnel 7y ago
It's possible to hold an election in which voters write numbers on the ballot papers, next to the candidates' names. The votes can still be counted by computer; that's how Scotland holds elections under Single Transferable Vote.
TimJRobinson 7y ago
In Australia we write the rank number in boxes, I'm unsure what happens if you double up a number or the OCR machine can't figure out what it is. The ideal solution IMO is a touch screen machine with a list of candidates, you drag and drop your order of preference, then when you're done it prints out a paper ballot which you can double check is correct then drop in the ballot box.
- ferzul 7y ago
  For single member electorates, the count is done by hand. On the night, they quickly allocate ballots to their first preference, and then they allocate them according to which of the two most likely winners is on top. (Usually, that means whoever came first and second last time, even if a repeat isn't all that likely, but with a powerful enough justification they sometimes make a different choice.) The full count is done by hand starting on Monday at the earliest. It may have to wait up to two weeks if it's close - government is formed on the basis of the unofficial, indicative counts. OCR is mostly used for multmember electorates which aren't a problem in the US due to being prohibited by federal law (when they were used, it was block voting not proportional, so very badly antidemocratic). In that case, when the machines confidence is low, it gets done by hand.

vatueil 7y ago

Even if we insist on preserving traditional hand-counting of counting paper ballots, for good or ill, couldn't we use electronic voting machines to fill out paper ballots?

crooked-v 7y ago

Some usability testing by FairVote suggests that the most usable ranked ballot design usable with existing scanning machines looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/oiBMZ22.jpg https://i.imgur.com/oiBMZ22.jpg

lambertsimnel 7y ago

It's possible to hold an election in which voters write numbers on the ballot papers, next to the candidates' names. The votes can still be counted by computer; that's how Scotland holds elections under Single Transferable Vote.

TimJRobinson 7y ago

In Australia we write the rank number in boxes, I'm unsure what happens if you double up a number or the OCR machine can't figure out what it is. The ideal solution IMO is a touch screen machine with a list of candidates, you drag and drop your order of preference, then when you're done it prints out a paper ballot which you can double check is correct then drop in the ballot box.

ferzul 7y ago
For single member electorates, the count is done by hand. On the night, they quickly allocate ballots to their first preference, and then they allocate them according to which of the two most likely winners is on top. (Usually, that means whoever came first and second last time, even if a repeat isn't all that likely, but with a powerful enough justification they sometimes make a different choice.) The full count is done by hand starting on Monday at the earliest. It may have to wait up to two weeks if it's close - government is formed on the basis of the unofficial, indicative counts. OCR is mostly used for multmember electorates which aren't a problem in the US due to being prohibited by federal law (when they were used, it was block voting not proportional, so very badly antidemocratic). In that case, when the machines confidence is low, it gets done by hand.