Yesterday, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner released to Governor Ted Strickland and the Ohio General Assembly a "blueprint for enhancing Ohio's elections." This blueprint (click here to download) is the culmination of work that began immediately after the 2008 election, when Secretary Brunner convened the first Ohio Elections Summit, which I chaired. The bipartisan Ohio Association of Election Officials has expressed support for Secretary Brunner's proposal, and I'm hopeful that it will move the ball closer toward important improvements in Ohio election administration and law.
The December Elections Summit called by Secretary Brunner, in addition to a later conference in March, brought together voters, non-partisan and partisan election experts, election officials and state legislators, of both political parties. These events were deliberative and substantive. As I've blogged before, I would very much like to see more Secretaries of State follow Jennifer Brunner's lead and adopt similar processes in their states.
Looks like Minnesota's senate race isn't the only one that's going to keep us waiting for a winner: it'll probably be at least another two weeks before anyone knows who won yesterday's closely watched special election in New York's 20th Congressional district.
As the New York Timesreports, after yesterday's balloting, a "mere 65 votes" separate the two candidates vying to fill the Congressional seat vacated by New York's newest Senator, Kristen Gillibrand. Given that razor-thin margin, it may not be possible to declare a winner until all the absentee ballots are counted—and that may not happen until after April 13th.
In December, Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner called together some of the country's leading election experts and voting rights advocates, as well as a bipartisan group of state legislators and election officials, to review the 2008 election and offer suggestions for reforming the state's election policy. She asked me to Chair this summit and to prepare a report summarizing the views of those who participated, providing relevant background and data where needed. She called this the "first step" in a process to solicit the views of Ohio voters and experts as she developed her reform agenda.
Jackson Pollock? Perhaps Brice Marden? Afraid not. Unfortunately, those frenetic abstract gestures to the right were made by a Minnesota voter on a ballot rather than a canvas (click image to see ballot).
The Senate contest between Al Franken (D) and Norm Coleman (R) is still undecided, as the recount has now stretched well into holiday shopping season (the widget posted below should provide the most up-to-date tally). Interestingly, a number of media outlets have posted features on their sites that allow anyone to examine all the contested ballots. The first time I scrolled through the Star Tribunes' version, "Ballot Challenge," one thing quickly became clear: usability, the ease at which voters are able to correctly navigate and mark a ballot, appeared to be a significant issue for some voters. As a result, there's a chance their vote won't count in a race that could very well be decided by a handful of votes.
This morning, I turned to Dana Chisnell, a researcher who studies "how people interact with technology specializing in design for older adults, ballot usability, and plain language," for insight as to why some of these challenged ballots have been miss marked, mangled, and must now go before a canvassing board to be interpreted. The analysis below is by no means exhaustive, but merely a sampling of her genius. For more on her work, click here to read her postings on the Usability Professional's Association blog.
The ballots we discussed can be found on the Minnesota Public Radios feature, here. Click on the ballots to see them larger.
Over the last couple of months, there have been countless media reports of officials and partisan operatives erecting barriers to voting—many of questionable legality. Less attention has been paid to the fact that multiple state and local officials have worked very hard to ensure that everybody who has the right to vote will be able to cast a ballot and have it count. Here's our list of some of these good moves so far:
- Florida Governor Charlie Crist. Governor Crist,in an effort to stem the long lines caused by record numbers of early voters, issued an emergency executive order extending voting hours from eight to twelve hours aday. Governor Crist's action came despite calls from fellow Republicans urging him not to expand access to the polls. As he explained, "It's not apolitical decision. It's a people'sdecision."
In recent days during early voting, we've seen a rashofreports from voters using touch-screen machines who say they pressed the name of one candidate and watched in horror as the screen lit up for another. This is known as "vote-flipping," and—for obvious reasons—can be very disconcerting to voters.
There are a few things about vote-flipping that voters should know. First, just because a vote "flipped" from Obama to McCain (or vice-versa) on one of these machines doesn't mean someone has taken over the machine and is stealing votes from one candidate to another (in fact, if someone was going to do this, they probably wouldn't give the voter a clue by showing them what was happening on the screen itself). Rather, in all likelihood, this is caused by what is referred to as a "calibration" problem. Touch screen machines are calibrated in advance so that when a voter presses on the screen, the machine can interpret it as a vote for a particular candidate. Particularly after a few hours of voting, the calibration on these machines can slip—or they may not have been properly calibrated in the first place.
A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about some counties in Ohio that split the presidential contest into two columns on their paper ballots. We noted that this kind of split has caused problems for voters in the past.
More recently we've found out that some counties that use touch screen machines have split the presidential contest onto two pages -- meaning on the first screen voters might see Barr and Nader, and on the second screen McCain and Obama. For reasons explained in a memo we sent to county officials, that's likely to confuse and frustrate a fair number of voters. So far we have confirmed that Portage (home of Kent State), Hancock, and Wayne Counties have split the presidential contest this way. Others like Montgomery, Stark, and Butler Counties have managed to get the presidential contest (eight candidates and a write-in slot) onto one screen.
We've asked officials to change this ballot to make sure all candidates for the same office are on the same screen -- or, short of that, to make sure there is good public education at the polls to reduce voter confusion and frustration.
Some of you may have read
about North Carolina's
very confusing straight-party voting rules and ballots. If history is any guide, this has the
potential to have a huge impact on the outcome of the presidential contest in North Carolina.
North
Carolina, like 14 other states, has an option on the ballot that allows voters
to cast a straight-party ballot with one mark. Straight-party voting allows voters to vote
quickly and easily, and often results in more votes for down-ballot contests. But it presents some serious usability
challenges for voters. And In North
Carolina, straight-party voting is particularly tricky: a straight-party vote
(counter-intuitively) does not
include a vote for president—voters must make a separate mark under the
presidential contest (this is in contrast to other states, like Texas, where
attempting to vote for President after choosing straight party voting could
nullify one's vote).
Perhaps
not surprisingly, in the last few elections, North Carolina has had an unusually
high number of voters who did not cast votes in the presidential election. Dr. Justin Moore of Duke University
estimates 3.15% of voters did not have votes recorded for President in 2000,
and 2.57% did not have votes cast for president in 2004.* As we noted in our recent report Better
Ballots, having more than 1% of voters fail to cast a vote in the
presidential contest is unusual and often an indication of a ballot design flaw
or other problem.
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