{"id":69524,"date":"2016-11-02T12:30:50","date_gmt":"2016-11-02T17:30:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=69524"},"modified":"2016-11-02T12:30:50","modified_gmt":"2016-11-02T17:30:50","slug":"rigged-by-design-how-ballots-lose-votes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2016\/11\/02\/rigged-by-design-how-ballots-lose-votes\/","title":{"rendered":"Rigged by Design: How Ballots Lose Votes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>According to a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brennancenter.org\/sites\/default\/files\/legacy\/Democracy\/Better%20Ballots.pdf\">report<\/a> from the Brennan Center for Justice, tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of votes are rejected or miscast because of\u00a0known bad\u00a0ballot designs. Intuitive design is especially important because approximately 50 million people each year encounter a ballot design for the first time, either because they&#8217;ve moved, are new to voting, or because the ballot has been revised. People who are most vulnerable to ballot design disenfranchisement are people living in poverty, older voters, and new voters.<\/p>\n<p>Some problems with ballot designs:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Including all instructions at the beginning of the ballot instead of alongside each task.<\/li>\n<li>Passive voice; negatives.<\/li>\n<li>Small or unreadable fonts, like this:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-69526\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/11\/6.png\" alt=\"6\" width=\"367\" height=\"306\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Unnecessarily complex language.<\/li>\n<li>Listing candidates for a single office on multiple pages.<\/li>\n<li>Including more than\u00a0one contest per page.<\/li>\n<li>Centered, all-caps, and dense text, like this:<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-69525\" src=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/11\/3.png\" alt=\"3\" width=\"699\" height=\"118\" srcset=\"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/11\/3.png 699w, https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/11\/3-500x84.png 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 699px) 100vw, 699px\" \/><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Inconsistent use of font or failure to differentiate different kinds of information with shading or font.<\/li>\n<li>Confusing indications as to how to indicate the voter&#8217;s\u00a0choice.<\/li>\n<li>Publicizing sample ballots that don&#8217;t match actual ballots.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There are many examples of good and bad ballots at the Brennan Center&#8217;s report, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.brennancenter.org\/sites\/default\/files\/legacy\/Democracy\/Better%20Ballots.pdf\">Better Ballots<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>The Brennan Center asserts that these problems are easily identified. Unfortunately, many jurisdictions aren&#8217;t paying attention:\u00a0very few pre-test\u00a0their ballot designs to discover problems and few examine results of election to discover which counties&#8217; elections are most undermined by lost and miscast votes.\u00a0Some jurisdictions,\u00a0moreover, are\u00a0operating under laws that\u00a0require the use of ballot designs that we know are bad\u00a0and many are using voting machines that are not flexible enough to accommodate good design.<\/p>\n<p>Good ballot design, the report emphasizes, is non-partisan, well understood,\u00a0inexpensive, and simple\u00a0to implement. It\u00a0may not be the most scandalous way to lose hundreds of thousands of votes, but it&#8217;s a real and substantial problem, and one that can be easily fixed.<\/p>\n<span class=\"ft_signature\"><em><a href=\"http:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/\">Lisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/American-Hookup-New-Culture-Campus\/dp\/039328509X?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">American Hookup<\/a><em>, a book about college sexual culture; a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/Gender-Interactions-Institutions-Lisa-Wade\/dp\/0393931072?ie=UTF8&amp;*Version*=1&amp;*entries*=0\">textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em><a href=\"https:\/\/lisa-wade.com\/intro\/\">Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a><em>.\u00a0You can follow her on <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/lisawade\">Twitter<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/lisawadephd\/\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>According to a report from the Brennan Center for Justice, tens and sometimes hundreds of thousands of votes are rejected or miscast because of\u00a0known bad\u00a0ballot designs. Intuitive design is especially important because approximately 50 million people each year encounter a ballot design for the first time, either because they&#8217;ve moved, are new to voting, or [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":69526,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[349,29,85,234,238,8121,20068,675],"class_list":["post-69524","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-ageaging","tag-class","tag-politics","tag-democracy","tag-election-2008","tag-election-2012","tag-politics-election-2016","tag-psychology"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2016\/11\/6.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69524","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=69524"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69524\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":69527,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/69524\/revisions\/69527"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/69526"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=69524"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=69524"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=69524"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}