Ballots don't just happen -- they're designed.

Better ballots aren't hard to achieve.
All it takes is good design.

The notorious Palm Beach "butterfly ballot" was a design debacle that set off an epic cultural battle, one that ultimately led to the Supreme Court showdown that secured the 2000 election for George W. Bush.

It's not an exaggeration to say that in 2000, issues of design -- including those as simple as font size, page layout, borders, and graphical elements like bullets and arrows -- helped determine the direction of a hotly contested Presidential race. Unfortunately, even after spending millions of taxpayers' dollars overhauling how we run elections, ballot design is still an issue. It’s no less true now than it was in 2000 that one poorly designed ballot could again tilt the outcome of an election.

Fortunately for American democracy, the kinds of problems that plagued Palm Beach County (and other jurisdictions) in 2000 are relatively easy to fix, if we have the political will.

The principles of usability and information architecture that help distinguish good design from bad are clear and well known. They're the same principles that magazine and book designers use to make their pages a pleasure to read instead of a chore, that advertisers and marketers use to get you to buy their products, that Web designers use to ensure that you know how to navigate a Web site even if you're seeing it for the first time.

To reduce future ballot design problems -- to prevent the next "butterfly ballot" -- all we need is a willingness on the part of elections officials to draw on those principles as they're designing their ballots, and someone to present those principles in a way that's helpful and actionable.

The Better Ballots Action Project is our attempt to move that process along.

We commissioned a study of ballot design problems, and their solutions, that would help elections officials understand the best ways to make their ballots easy to understand and easy to use. And through October, when ballot designs are finalized, we're traveling the United States, sharing our findings with state and local officials to help ensure that ballots are as clear as possible all across America.