I'm Sorry! But how hard it is to design a ballot that is easy to read?

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Look yaw'll, I'm no mensan or whatnot but surely to God *we* could design a ballot so simple as to keep the lawyers and partisans the hell out of it and or totally honest in the process,that there would be NO dispute about it.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), November 19, 2000

Answers

Capn~

Not hard to design a ballot that is easy to read-but to design one that fits with all the BS laws and IS workable IRL seems to be another matter indeed.

And, I hate to tell ya, but these are exactly the kind of ballots they have used in my county for about the last 8 years, with little fuss. What you see in 2-D is completely different in 3-D; you cannot mistake who you are voting for unless you cannot see (which is apparently a possiblity in Fla, what with the number of retirees).

I don't beleive we should kill the messenger, but instead listen to the message-as yet undefined!! Just my crummy two cents!!

-- Aunt Bee (Aunt__Bee@hotmail.com), November 19, 2000.


capnfun:

A ballot is hard to read IF and ONLY IF the guy you voted for lost by a very small margin. The size or layout of the ballot is irrelevant.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), November 19, 2000.


Aunt Bee, it's the same ballot in both places? The thing I had originally focused on was the fact that whenever the now-infamous Palm Beach Butterfly Ballot was shown, it was shown on its own; not on the machine. I saw one picture of it on the machine, and frankly, it did get confusing. Perhaps it was just that one picture, but the alignment of the ballot on the machine was completely off.

But if your county's set-up is the same and has been for eight years.....

I know this would be somewhat of a logistical nightmare, but wouldn't standardized Presidential election ballots be at least a partial solution?

-- Patricia (PatriciaS@lasvegas.com), November 19, 2000.


Patricia~

A standardized Presidential election ballots would be at least a partial solution, but in addition to the logistical nightmare, it would also be expensive to the municipalities that would have to bear the burden. However this fiasco may provide the impetus needed for change in every community in this country.

-- Aunt Bee (Aunt__Bee@hotmail.com), November 19, 2000.


One question that's been runnning through my mind is:How many different types of voting machinery are there? How many types of ballots exist? Could there be a concensus made of which ones are superior in all aspects?

After the present mess I'm willing to bet that just about everyone would be willing to spend some of the so called "surplus" on a standardized voting system.Unless there is a reason NOT to do so.

-- capnfun (capnfun1@excite.com), November 19, 2000.



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