美国国家公共电台 NPR Why Are So Many Election Ballots Confusing?（在线收听）

Why Are So Many Election Ballots Confusing?

MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:

Several of the midterm races that went into overtime this year were slowed down in part by poor ballot design. In Florida, 30,000 voters in Broward County voted for a candidate for governor but not for the Senate. That race was buried under a block of text. In Georgia, so many voters filled in their birthdate incorrectly that a federal judge ordered those ballots be counted. So what makes a good ballot design, and why is it so hard to come by? NPR's Rebecca Ellis has more.

REBECCA ELLIS, BYLINE: Whitney Quesenbery knows a well-designed ballot when she sees it - 12-point font, lower case letters, a clean sans serif font.

WHITNEY QUESENBERY: Look at these instructions, right? They're beautiful.

ELLIS: Quesenbery has been assessing ballot design for nearly two decades - first as an appointee to the Federal Election Assistance Commission, then as a co-founder of the Center for Civic design. This year, Los Angeles County's ballot was on the cutting edge. But she says other election boards still distribute ballots that look like they came out of the last century. I hand her one from Chenango County, N.Y. The layout is typical for the state, which has strict, some say dated rules on what counties can do with their ballot, like the statute requiring an illustrated index finger point toward each candidate.

QUESENBERY: It's like a typographical convention from the '40s.

ELLIS: Then there are the odd emblems used to denote each party.

QUESENBERY: Why are Democrats a star? And what is the Republican one?

ELLIS: It's an eagle. And, of course, the 276 words of instruction.

QUESENBERY: Mark only with a writing instrument provided by the Board of Elections. Who's the Board of elections? What's a writing instrument? And why?

ELLIS: Stilted language and data design isn't an issue just because it irks experts like Quesenbery. It can cause voters to make real mistakes, like the cascade of misfortunes that hit New York City this year after it unrolled its perforated, two-page ballot. Voters who didn't know you had to tear at the edges to get at the entire ballot ended up skipping the middle pages. Then the fat ballots jammed the scanners. Long lines formed. People went home. Quesenbery can add it to the list.

QUESENBERY: I have his collection of ballots, and they're basically all histories of disasters.

ELLIS: The collection dates back to 2000, when poorly designed so-called butterfly ballots in Palm Beach County, Fla. crippled the presidential election.

QUESENBERY: I suddenly realized that what was wrong was something I knew about, right, which was design.

ELLIS: At the time, Quesenbery was in the field of usability. She worked with places like Amtrak and eBay making it easier for users to buy and bid. Post-election, she pivoted exclusively to voting materials. Since then, she says she's seeing real improvement within California, Virginia, even New York. But other counties stay static, constrained by old technology, arcane laws and tradition.

TINA OLIVIERO: It's basically always stayed pretty much the same.

ELLIS: Tina Oliviero was in charge of this year's design for Chenango County, N.Y. When I gave her a call at the county's board of elections late last week, she was still tallying ballots. She says it looks like most voters have filled in the ovals just fine.

OLIVIERO: We do have voters that don't fill it in, and they X or check.

ELLIS: Quesenbery says this may be because the directions are located at the bottom of the ballot. But Oliviero says the instructions are clear.

OLIVIERO: I feel that it makes it simple, and it makes it so people should know. You fill the oval in, and then you cast your ballot.

ELLIS: The Brennan Center for Justice estimates tens of thousands of votes are lost each year to tiny mistakes like these. It's not just the voting portion of the ballot where people stumble. In several states, signatures on the ballots are supposed to match the signatures on file. If they don't, the vote gets thrown out. Here, Quesenbery prescribes a big box with an X.

QUESENBERY: That nice, big X tells you that at the end of this form, this is the thing that signs and seals it.

ELLIS: And above the box, there would be instructions.

QUESENBERY: Write within the lines. Your signature will be matched.

ELLIS: Simple - just like voting should be.

Rebecca Ellis, NPR News, Washington.

(SOUNDBITE OF MAC MILLER SONG, "WHAT'S THE USE?")