Compare and contrast:<p>This City of Austin ballot question:<p><a href="https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6679117/Screen%20Shot%202016-06-20%20at%203.05.27%20PM.png" rel="nofollow">https://cdn1.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/6679117/S...</a><p>The Brexit ballot:<p><a href="http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160621144335-uk-referendum-on-eu-brexit-ballot-paper-vote-large-tease.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/160621144335-uk-...</a><p>Can anyone (who hasn't seen it before) easily explain what a vote in the Austin example would do?<p>From <a href="http://www.vox.com/2016/6/23/11979522/brexit-ballot" rel="nofollow">http://www.vox.com/2016/6/23/11979522/brexit-ballot</a>:<p><pre><code> 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.</code></pre>
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.<p>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.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.washington.edu/news/files/2016/03/3479146036_dda3e36872_b-1.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.washington.edu/news/files/2016/03/3479146036_dda3...</a> [2] <a href="https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5291/5481639542_1e342a5f69_b.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://c2.staticflickr.com/6/5291/5481639542_1e342a5f69_b.j...</a> [3] <a href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Butterfly_Voters_View.jpg" rel="nofollow">https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/06/Butterfl...</a> [4] <a href="http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~jcAAOSw~bFWOQO0/s-l1600.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://i.ebayimg.com/images/g/~jcAAOSw~bFWOQO0/s-l1600.jpg</a>
This article has a clearer image of the Florida 2000 ballot: <a href="http://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.asktog.com/columns/042ButterflyBallot.html</a><p>Also, good podcast interview about the post-vote legal wrangling <a href="https://soundcloud.com/candidate-confessional/the-man-who-tried-to-help-al" rel="nofollow">https://soundcloud.com/candidate-confessional/the-man-who-tr...</a><p>And another podcast specifically on the issue of ballot design: <a href="https://www.relay.fm/presentable/11" rel="nofollow">https://www.relay.fm/presentable/11</a>
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.
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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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.<p>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).<p>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.<p>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 <i>still get a say</i> 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.<p>[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.<p>[1] <a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single_transferable_vote</a>
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:<p><a href="http://www.capyouthvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ballot.jpg" rel="nofollow">http://www.capyouthvote.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/07/ballo...</a><p>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.<p>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.
The most effectively designed ballot for its purpose was probably the one used to decide the
Anschluss referendum<p><a href="https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_Anschluss_referendum,_1938" rel="nofollow">https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Austrian_Anschluss_referendu...</a>
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.<p>That way we can have the result immediately.<p>For postal votes it appears you're not anonymous anyway, so no harm in the returning officer dropping a ball in for you.<p>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?
In Switzerland, people <i>write</i> 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.
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?