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by danielweber 4978 days ago
How do you count a smudge instead of a complete filling-in of the oval? You have humans go over them, and people hate that.

Just because you never see this issue doesn't mean it doesn't exist. It's just that the ambiguous ballots don't matter in the vast majority of elections so no one cares.

I'm not saying computers are better than paper. They each have trade-offs.
1 comments
evandena 4978 days ago
Bubbles seem stupid to me. It's a lot easier and less subjective on review to fill in an arrow than it is to fill in a bubble. Here's an example ballot of what I'm talking about: http://www.town.oregon.wi.us/uploads/ckfiles/images/nov_06_s...
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morsch 4978 days ago
Here's what our ballots look like: http://www.leinfelden-echterdingen.de/servlet/PB/show/141628...

There's never been any real discussion about it being complicated, confusing or needing any other kind of design change. (Which isn't to say that you couldn't make arguments in that vein.)

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squidsoup 4978 days ago
Similar to our ballots in New Zealand http://www.elections.org.nz/files/sample_ballot_paper_copy.g...

There's not much room for error in this design - it seems to work well for us.

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evandena 4978 days ago
That's much clearer than some of the Scanatron bubble types.
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danielweber 4978 days ago
The arrow-thing is also confusing to people. I guarantee you that election officials have had to make a judgment call about them.

EDIT: Out of 1000 people, how many will get confused by this design? http://www.umsl.edu/~kimballd/polk.pdf

SECOND EDIT: misaligned arrows were also a problem in Florida in the 2000 election

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evandena 4978 days ago
It just seems more natural to fill in a line than to fill in a circle. Your wrist is more stable and less shaky to make a couple straight lines with a marker.
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morsch 4977 days ago
I was going to say you're wrong, but I agree that if I had to fill in dozens or hundreds of items, I'd prefer filling in lines. Your wrist is more stable and it seems like a very quick motion.

However, that kind of efficiency isn't required at all in a ballot. Making a couple of crosses instead of lines isn't going to make a big absolute difference in terms of the entire voting process. You want to maximize other things, first and foremost making it easy to understand and easy to recognize clearly for both the voter and the people/entities who count.

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