Ballot & Election Material Design
When it comes to ensuring that votes are accurately recorded and tallied, there is a respectable argument that poor ballot design and confusing instructions have resulted in far more lost votes than software glitches, programming errors, or machine breakdowns. As the Brennan Center's work demonstrates, poor ballot design and instructions have caused the loss of tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of votes in nearly every election year. While all groups of voters are affected by poorly designed ballots and badly drafted instructions, these problems disproportionately affect low-income voters, new voters, and elderly voters. All too often, the loss of votes and rate of errors resulting from these mistakes are greater than the margin of victory between the two leading candidates.
Problems caused by poor ballot design and instructions recur in American elections, regardless of the type of voting technology a jurisdiction has used. Some have dismissed the degree to which poor ballot design undermines democracy by arguing that voters only have themselves to blame if they fail to properly navigate design flaws. This is unfair. Candidates should win or lose elections based upon whether or not they are preferred by a majority of voters, not on whether they have the largest number of supporters who—as a result of education and experience—have greater facility navigating unnecessarily complicated interfaces or complex instructions, or because fewer of their supporters are elderly or have reading disabilities. Nor should candidates win elections because ballot designs happened to make it more difficult for voters supporting their opponents to accurately cast their votes.
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Poor Design Leads to Lost Votes
In New York's 2010 election, a confusing ballot design and a misleading warning message on voting machines led to as many as 20,000 lost votes in the governor’s contest alone.
...and it always will. Here’s even more proof, from a flawed ballot in King County, Washington State, that election officials should conduct simple usability testing on their ballots.
Art? Bad Design? A Vote for Senate?
Unfortunately, those frenetic abstract gestures were made by a Minnesota voter on a ballot rather than a canvas….
Illustrations by Risko
Report: 60,000 New York Votes Lost Due to Poor Design in 2010
A new Brennan Center for Justice analysis of data from the 2010 election indicates more than 20,000 votes for governor in New York were lost because machines read them as “overvotes,” ballots with too many candidates selected. The analysis finds New York voting machines’ confusing and misleading overvote warning message is at fault, as well as the state’s outdated ballot design.
Report: Tens of Thousands of Votes Lost Due to Poor Design in 2008 and 2010
A new Brennan Center for Justice analysis of data from the 2010 general election finds more than 20,000 votes for governor in New York were lost because machines read them as “overvotes,” ballots with too many candidates selected.
Brennan Center Announces “Double Vote” Settlement, Victory for Minor Parties and Voters
A settlement has been announced in the Brennan Center's lawsuit against the State Board of Elections on behalf of three of New York's minor parties. The lawsuit challenged a discriminatory New York State policy for counting political party votes.
The Voter Friendly Ballot Act of 2011
The Voter Friendly Ballot Act is legislation to simplify New York State's paper ballot design, and is the product of collaboration between New York State Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, the Brennan Center, the Usability Professionals Association, and AIGA, the professional association for design.
Notice of Unprecleared Voting Change in New York City
The New York State Board of Elections has implemented procedures that deviate from New York law and previous practice in two ways: A: the notification that voters receive when a voter casts an invalid, overvoted ballot; and B: the manner in which the voting system handles that ballot. This letter outlines the details of these procedures and how they diverge from NY law.
Letter to the New York State Board of Elections Regarding Usability Testing for New Election Systems
Usability experts urge the New York state Board of Elections to conduct usability testing on the state’s new voting systems
In November 2010, millions of New Yorkers voted on electronic, optical-scan voting machines for the first time. Citizens went to their polling places on Election Day, filled out paper ballots and fed them into brand-new machines. But tens of thousands of them did not count.
Avoiding the Florida Nightmare in 2012
On Election Day 2000, tens of thousands of Floridians accidentally marked their ballots in ways that could not be read by the state’s voting machines. Their votes didn’t count. The identity of our next president hung in the balance for 36 days.
From the “Ballot Design Study,” core findings, recommendations as well as ballots from four counties illustrating past design flaws that may have affected elections.