Building a Better Ballot

August 20, 2008 3:00 AM | | Comments (0)

from Governing.com Idea Center
butterfly ballot.jpg
Official ballot, general election, Palm Beach County, Florida, November 7, 2000. From Wikimedia Commons.

 Poorly designed ballots have disenfranchised hundreds of thousands of voters in recent elections.

 A new analysis of election ballots by the Brennan Center for Justice at the New York University School of Law found 13 design flaws that continue to plague elections despite the $3 billion Congress set aside to overhaul voting systems in the aftermath of the 2000 presidential vote.
Typical flaws include listing candidates for the same office on two or more pages or columns, listing multiple contests on the same screen, and providing instructions that are full of legal or election jargon.

The report, Better Ballots, draws on results from the 2000, 2002 and 2006 elections in both state and federal contests. It recommends several guidelines to county, state and federal election officials on how to improve ballot design, with an emphasis on measures that can be taken in time to affect the November 2008 election.

The recommendations include conducting usability tests of ballots before finalizing the design, amending elections laws that prevent counties from employing the most usable ballot designs, and requiring counties to report the number of overvotes, undervotes and spoiled ballots. The report also documents instances of bad ballot designs from around the country and provides examples of poorly designed ballots on the Web site.

Categories: Best Ideas From Around the Country, Government

Tags: ballots, Brennan Center for Justice, Governing.com Idea Center, voting machines

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