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Defects by design: Ballots that fool voters

The document discusses the critical impact of ballot design on voter accuracy and intent, highlighting issues such as typography, layout, and clarity of instructions. It emphasizes the importance of accessible design principles to ensure that all voters can understand and interact with ballots effectively. The document advocates for testing designs with voters and adhering to proven principles to improve voting outcomes.

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Defects by design | 1 Defects by design Ballots that fool voters Whitney Quesenbery Center for Civic Design @civicdesign | @whitneyq
EAC / Design for Democracy Effective Designs for the Administration of Federal Elections (2007) Better Ballots (2008), Better Design, Better Elections (2012) and Design Deficiencies and Lost Votes (2011) Field Guides to Ensuring Voter Intent, Vol 01 Designing Usable Ballots Anywhere Ballot
A failure of intent caused by Typography Ballot layout Marking mechanisms Instructions and messages and election codes that require poor design
Election design challenges affect all facets of voting Perception Interaction Understanding and civic literacy gaps
Defects by design | 5 43% of adults in the US read at basic or below basic levels U.S. National Assessment of Adult Literacy http://nces.ed.gov/naal/kf_demographics.asp 14% 29% 44% 13% 30 Million 63 Million 95 Million 28 Million
Defects by design | 6 If you can’t read the ballot effectively, you can’t vote accurately Look at all the confusing text and graphics
Defects by design | 7 If you can’t read the ballot effectively, you can’t vote accurately Good typography can make even a rows-and- columns ballot easier to use
Defects by design | 8 If you can’t find the correct marking location, you can’t vote accurately The layout on the right makes it easier to find the correct mark. The layout on the left skips holes in unpredictable ways.
Defects by design | 9 If you don’t know how voting works, you can’t vote accurately Can you tell that you should only vote on one side of the ballot? And that your vote is not counted if you do?
Defects by design | 10 Make contest boundaries easy to see 1. A contest hidden below instructions 2. A contest hidden above another contest. Look how much clearer when it’s on its own page. 2. A New York City ballot (the have gotten a little better since this election!)
Defects by design | 11 Never - ever - split a contest across columns or pages With 34 candidates for Senate, California election officials struggled to find layouts that wouldn’t cause overvotes. See https://civicdesign.org/breaking-the-ballot/
Defects by design | 12 A consistent and unambiguous relationship between voting choice and marking mechanism When the oval or arrow or square is to the left of the name, it’s got a stronger association. Multi-column ballots make ovals on the right an even worse problem.
Defects by design | 13 A consistent and unambiguous relationship between voting choice and marking mechanism A good mitigation in a state whose election code says that the ovals must be on the right – staggering the rows.
Defects by design | 14 Give voters control of all actions that make or change a ballot selection Every ballot marking device should have a well-designed review screen. The Help America Vote Act requires that voters are warned of overvotes, but scanners don’t usually warn about undervotes.
Defects by design | 15 Don’t force voters into problem-solving Tell voters what they can do. Don’t make them do arithmetic.
Defects by design | 16 Don’t force voters into problem-solving Don’t use terms that voters won’t understand. Design messages to help voters take action to make their ballot reflect their intent.
Defects by design | 17 Clear, minimal, helpful instructions in the right place There is really nothing to say. The short clean text, good layout and visual illustration speaks for itself.
Defects by design | 18 Clear, minimal, helpful instructions in the right place Our research to design better ranked choice ballots and instructions showed that it’s the right words, not more words. https://civicdesign.org/projects/rcv/
Ballot design can help voters be successful Follow proven election design principles Meet voters' needs for easy interaction, plain language, and clear design Test with voters
Thank you Whitney Quesenbery whitneyq@civicdesign.org @whitneyq civicdesign.org @civicdesign Better Ballots research on ballots that have fooled voters in real elections https://www.brennancenter.org/publication/better-ballots