I'm sure this has been hackneyed to death, but here goes: Something is Rotten in the State of Florida.
1
All elections should be vote by mail. It would save so much gas, long waiting in lines, and leave a verifiable paper trail. It gives one time to leisurely research obscure races that you know nothing about, and in Montana, costs a whole two stamps to mail back. Then you can check online to see if was received and accepted.
Florida is an embarrassing joke and if there weren’t shenanigans going on in 2000, Al Gore would have become our President and have made great inroads towards combating climate change.
48
How is it even possible — 18 years after the infamous Butterfly Ballot Boo-Boo and the Mystery of the Hanging Chad — that we STILL permit county-level incompetents to design ballots for closely contested national elections? It just boggles the mind.
39
There are two other anomalies that I am aware of.
An under vote in Broward,,, are there electronic vote readers? Programmed by whom?
In Michigan 2 years ago, there were as many as 80,000 non votes for president. In so contentious a race,, that stuck me as odd, and un-naturally high.
In Nevada a few days ago,, a dead man won 70% of the vote,,, a brothel owner.
I strikes me that these vote counting machines are programed each election, by one person,, or one company. After the debacle of Volkswagen having a liar program inserted into their autos for ten years to pass emissions tests. It would be a programmer's child's play to insert a line or two of code that activated for election day, and self erased the day after. Far , far, too easy.
Are these anomalies worth a second look? A job only for the FBI. I wish they would look into it.
34
18 years after Bush v. Gore, Republicans are again filing suit to keep Democratic-leaning counties in Florida from counting all the votes. Have we learned nothing since then? In the sage words of George W., "fool me once, shame on — shame on you. Fool me — you can't get fooled again!"
20
First look — terrible design.
There seems to be no insight or feedback on these things.
Did one person make this?
9
Rick Scott has engineered a theft of this election. He is a crook - has always been one - and freely admits to running a company that stole 7 billion (that is a "B" in that word) from Medicare. He is proud of his record as a thief. He has been a horrible governor and has no business sharing a a senatorial post alongside his other sterling partner, the useless and spineless Marco Rubio.
35
fivethirtyeight has the ballot. What a nightmare. Three narrow columns, the first on the first page goes down 3/4 of the page with instruction. Top of the second column is the governor's race.
Can some UX designer team up with a sociologist to do studies on ballot design?
This is tragic.
23
That's a hideous design. No focus, no organization. Looks like a bad classified-ad page of a newspaper. But more important, why does Florida continue to have such design problems?
17
Can't we just cut off Florida and let them float away. They (always) seem to cause some sort of issue.
11
Looks like some dumbies in FL have done it again! Remember the notorious “butterfly” ballots in 2000 that probably cost Gore the election?
5
a chad by any other name can still hang an election
4
I stopped at McDonald's for a cup of coffee. It came to $1.36, so I gave the cashier $2.00, which she rang up, with the cash register showing .64 in change. I found a penny and gave it to her. She got out her phone and plugged in the calculation, and about 30 seconds later calculated she'd owe me .65.
There are a LOT of voters out there who struggle with some very simple problems, so it is no surprise that we might have issues with the ballots. And, one of the steps with design of a product is that you have to put yourself in the users shoes, and start with some of the lowest common denominator (like 5th grade e.g.). The KISS (keep it simple, stupid) concept.
10
First the butterfly ballot in Palm Beach county in 2000 that sent Bush to the White House with an assist from his brother And the Supreme Court. Now this stupid design from broward county who looks at and approves these things? So now we will send the Medicare fraud Scott to the senate because of a bad ballot.
14
Good Lord, first chads, now this? Can someone please help Floridians from shooting themselves in the electoral foot?! And from taking down the rest of us with them!
8
I live in Palm Beach County and the elections people here and in Broward County are a joke. Hire an independent accounting firm and fire these clowns.
19
I tell you why there was an undervote because the choice of candidates was horrible.
No worries.
Broward County Democrat officials keep finding thousands and thousands of previously uncounted votes for Democrats.
As always.
3
Simply put, Dems need to Gore Scott.
10
what is it about Florida that they cant seem to run an election? Why cant they prepare a simple ballot? I swear we run our elections like some third world republic. .
43
The United States, under Trump, has become the laughingstock of the world.
Florida, with its inability to count and/or record votes properly, has become the laughingstock of the United States.
29
Did voters not know there was a Senate race? Weren't there multiple newspaper articles and local newscasts about the race?
23
It looks fairly obvious to me.
7
My ballot has always looked like this and I never get confused. They teach you in highschool to always read everything. If you don't you may vote for something you don't want.
10
Democrat designed ballots defeated Al Gore and now?
Democrats seem to figure out how they have been outsmarted by the GOP by an eight to twenty year delay.
7
Each section is clearly set off by a gray box. What's the confusing part? Do Democrats stop reading a certain distance down a page? Or not read the instructions and assume everything below them is worth ignoring, too?
I see no good arguments about the design being at fault for anything. The only problem here is lazy voters who didn't read their ballots.
9
This situation is why I find it so difficult to contribute to political campaigns if and when I support the candidate the money is spent on incessant ads of dubious quality and efficacy where few do the simple do diligence about weather pallets are clear and the orders are not surprised in their ability to caster voice.
1
Democrats can’t run an election - again - hilarious! And to think that want to run the country.
6
Why not copy Arizona’s ballots? They work fine.
2
I can't believe we have a ballot prejudicial design problem again in a district favoring Democrats like the one favoring Pat Buchanan in 2000. Really unbelievable. Are Democrats monitoring these things? Are they even allowed to? Next they'll be leaving Democratic names off of the ballots entirely or hidden on a "page 2."
13
If many citizens are like me, they wouldn't know you must vote for each office. I have always thought you could skip items where you couldn't choose or didn't know enough about the choices, and simply vote for contests that mean something to you. No???? As for design of ballots, it should be universal.
5
There is little to no fraud in the election process. There is fake news primarily driven by sources outside the USA - i.e. Russia. In the case of Broward County, it is overwhelming Democrats. So please, do not pin this on anyone other than the incompetents in Broward. They did it again.
5
Surely, the Governor (Rick Scott) should have known if he had a troubled Election Board in south FL.
2
Why Florida again. Florida should pay an income tax and get itself in order !
8
Ironic that Rick Scott is crying fraud when the more likely scenario is a mistake that actually wins him the election! Another election where the will of the people it thwarted. Worse you have Trump bellowing about this and Arizona on the same day his staff releases a patently doctored video to spread another one of his fraudulent accusations. Then there are the widespread efforts of Republicans to try and prevent legitimate voters they perceive as 'unfriendly' to them from exercising their constitutional right. What has happened to this country? Doesn't matter where you stand politically, this is un-American.
16
Design is too important to be left to political people who have no knowledge or talent for it. I remember that was a major reason why the ballot confused Jewish voters in 2000 who ended up voting for Buchanan by mistake. The clerk was a high school graduate who was ignorant of the importance of design. You'd think FL would have figured this out. The Chicago ballots are much clearer than this.
9
“Undervotes” affect both candidates equally. Broward County is heavily Democratic. Democratic voters did not neglect to vote for Nelson anymore than Republican voters neglected to vote for Scott.
2
Re possible “undervote”
Statewide there were some 60,000-70,000 fewer votes for Governor than Senator, between D and R combined.
How is that consistent with the notion of undervoting in the Senate race???
Yes. Of course, that’s it. Al Gore didn’t lose. He was cheated. Hillary Clinton didn’t lose. She was cheated. Nelson didn’t lose. He was cheated.
5
It would make it a heck of a lot less confusing if people could choose EITHER an English language or a Spanish language ballot. Then there would be less print on the page and it would be much more readable. But maybe the Republicans would prefer that that doesn’t happen...
5
Is there no end to this insanity?
3
Florida & Ballot Design Problem
It's like déjà vu all over again.
5
Who designed the ballots?
1
if you cant figure out how to vote, your vote shouldn't count. elected officials should be elected by people who are knowledgable about the ramifications of their votes. for instance, when 90% of the black population votes for barack obama, clearly that vote is not based on his qualifications.
4
What about overvotes. That's where the big cheating took place in FL in 2000. I was there and documented it. 50,000 votes in Dem districts had double punches spoiling them - except they were all in the Same hole rather than random, at million to one odds against that. Meaning IBM 1029 keypunch machines set on autopunch were used to ruin stacks of ballots. The media blew up the much smaller and easily ridiculed "hanging chads" but for some reason totally ignored the overvote. And they had the information. We got it from a disgruntled WaPo reporter who thought they should have published it. But the big corporations wanted Bush and media is now run by them.
13
It’s literally mind blowing mutual incompetence. An electorate that cannot follow a ballot and authorities that design a bad one. The greatest country on earth indeed. Florida would be a laughingstock but its incompetence has global consequences. Laugh or cry?
6
There is nothing wrong with the design. There is even a different color to mark where you are supposed to vote. If you are a normal adult you do not "miss" a US senate vote.
4
counting votes, well, to be kind, that is NOT OKAY. I would like to invite the United Nations to come in and oversee our elections in these places where people just cant seem to, or don't want to, get their act together and DO THEIR JOBS so that all citizens can exercise their right to vote, AND have their vote counted! Also, I am available for consulting on ballot design. sheesh. Also, I check my ballot with a fine tooth comb. If there are that many undervotes because people can't or don't want to read, well, I could cry. (Thanks NYT, Nate Cohn and Kevin Quealy for your excellent reporting on this. Keep it up, please!)
3
It's time we considered standardizing elections across the nation, at least for offices in the federal government. The idea that something like a faulty ballot design in one county could have nullified the choice of the voters of an entire state for their senator is unacceptable. Whether it's partisan shenanigans or incompetence or some other factor that causes problems we see so often at the polls in one state or another, all of us have to live with the consequences. We just can't have a real democracy without a valid and reliable system for registering and counting votes everywhere.
11
What about hacking? Like, maybe electronically erasing the Senate votes in a Democratic disctrict? Is that impossible? Is it impermissible even to wonder about it? Not for me. Republican control of the Senate could be based on selective, targeted hacking of hardware and software in a few states. Putin could arrange for that if he wanted, no?
7
If the House Dem, Ted Deutsche, won, and was placed below the Senate couces, how can people blame the design? On the othet hand, I'd like to remind Scott that he's still the Governor if this state and should fall back and let ALL votes be counted: especially military mailed in and homebound seniors who mailed on their ballots with the necessary postmarked date.
5
Did you ever consider it might be that a majority there don't speak english, and didn't take time to read ,or know how to read, all the more reason anyone coming to this country should be able to talk and read english b4 becoming a citizen and holding a drivers license ,so they can read the road signs.I was in south Dade 4 months and you had to point at a menu to get a Big Mac, and if you didn't want it with out pickle or 1000 island dressing ,you were in trouble, they couldn't understand enough english to order the sandwich the only way they were taught. So this is 1 more reason to stop the caravan and build the wall.
2
It would be great if, in future, these ballots and voting infrastructure problems would be scrutinized *before* election day. We have known since at least 2000 about widespread problems with ballots and voting machines in various states, not just Florida and Georgia. Why hasn't the New York Times kept its eye on this issue ever since? Neither the Washington Post nor the New York Times showed any active interest in pursuing the process when there were active recounts in the aftermath of the 2016 presidential election, to cite just another recent example of the mainstream presses' disinterest in the nitty-gritty of a well functioning voting infrastructure. I do hope this will change in future. Articles like these are important, but far more important is making the issue of voting irregularities and how to stamp them out a top news item on the front page, *before* not just after elections are over.
3
In my precinct in Maryland we had a two-page double sided ballot, however the election officials took pains to point out the two sides-- and how to fill it out-- before sending voters to their screens to fill out the ballots with a pen. Then voters placed their ballots in a scanner that produced a receipt (kept by the officials but shown to the voters)
1
Will the Democrats in Florida ever learn? After the Bush v. Gore fiasco, in which we all know the outcome, shouldn't more attention have been made to the design of the ballot? The ground team could have informed voters where the Senate box was located.
In 2000, the design of the ballot, as well as the notorious Supreme Court decision that stole the presidency from Gore should have alerted the dems.
This is 100% on their heads. I was rooting for Nelson, but Florida, really?
How informed and motivated could the voters have been if they didn't even notice that they hadn't voted for in the senate race?
This is further evidence that efforts to increase voter turnout are NOT a good idea. Citizens who don't care enough to make it to the polls - and who don't even notice that they haven't voted in the senate race - are unlikely to be informed on the issues. Uninformed votes are worse than no votes because they cancel out votes on the other side.
Let's stop trying to increase voter turnout and instead try to increase voter engagement!!!
3
Democrat here. But I simply can't get upset that those who can't properly fill out a ballot haven't [theoretically] had their votes counted.
2
The people who say the large undervote in the Senate race is the fault of the voters write as if they are a cut above us normal human beings. Actually, they are clueless.
In 2000, a disaster occurred in Palm Beach County. As in Broward now, the county supervisor of elections unintentionally blew the design. About 5000 voters from largely democratic precincts voted for Pat Buchanan, thinking they were voting for Gore.. Our neighbors, highly motivated college professors, didn't catch the glitch and voted for Buchanan.
Don't blame the victims. The fault lay with the supervisor and staff plus the county Democratic party's hacks who green lighted the design. Moral: If you design a ballot, do a trial vote. Gore paid the price with an evident assist from the Supreme Court.
Obviously, the Broward supervisor, heedless of South Florida history, blew the design, almost certainly approved by county Democratic and Republican leaders. Memo to Broward Democrats, put smarter people in charge of the party apparatus. Given the weight of history, there was no excuse for a bad design. Even if Nelson wins, Broward's Democrats should clean house.
5
There should be a new election if the ballot was confusing.
Why weren't there rows for each party and its candidates? Who designed this ballot?
What's with this state? (That's my last question!)
1
If indeed there was an exact if not “similar” undervote in the Congressional race in that left hand column then it’s reasonable to conclude the design was to blame and there should be a redo. If not, not.
1
The Miami Herald is reporting that Scott has not filed a lawsuit nor has anyone else--that there is no investigation (via a named spokesperson). So this report is likely not correct. Scott and other Reps are literally pushing this agenda of a lawsuit, but the FDLE is not conducting anything and confirms that no suit has been filed.
This concerns me and makes me question who fact-checked this or just put out in a rush.
Also, grew up in Miami and went to high school in Broward during the 2000 election. The chads were being counted at my local library. The issue in 2000 was mainly attributed to the Palm Beach County "butterfly ballot".
This "hysteria" about election fraud is a false flag--especially considering the repeated accusations hurled onto the Broward Supervisor of Elections in nearly every election she's supervised.
2
This is another reason why mail-in ballots are better. You have time to read the ballot, decide, and vote.
5
California had a massive undervote for the U.S. Senate in 2016 and 2018. This is due to the contests only having Democrats, so Republicans skip voting.
..and what's with a ballot you have to read downward in columns?
We in the West read across the page from left to right. Were these ballots printed in China??
2
Isn't there any constitutional provision for having a new vote?
My guess is there are a lot of fraudulent ballots cast for Andrew Gillum and those filling out the fake ballots did not care about the other contests.
1
This is an assumption. Many voters often don't vote for certain races, for various reasons. It could be that most of those voters couldn't stand either candidate. Please save the headline space for a story worth writing.
1
Hire some good designers - paper, not web.
Man, who knows what people wanted? I vote in Boston, MA where a similar ballot is used. I thought it was clunky, and had to review it several times as the ballot questions ran from one page into next. Where do you mark your vote?
1
This was a straight party ticket election ... considering how long the ballot, it is no wonder folks don't show up at the polling place ... yet voters had chances to vote early!!
Democrats should litigate this to the bitter end rather than accept defeat in a close election. Republicans should then do the same in all other voting precincts, seeking to expose irregularities that turn things in their favor.
Read the ballot, fill in the blanks, turn in your ballot.
33
Always hire a skilled graphic designer to create communications - someone who understands type and visual organization. Don't cheap out.
36
Very interesting. The people that couldn't figure out the ballot were the citified super educated while the uneducated bitter clingers and dispicables in the rural areas had no problem.
21
Mail in ballots.....easy solution. Works here in Colorado as well as many other states. No need to stand in line, no need to take time off work, fill out ballot at your leisure. Drop in the mail or at your polling place. No worries with hacking of voting machines because there is a paper trail. Of course Republicans wouldn’t go for it.....can’t suppress the vote.
60
Why is Broward County the only county that can't seem to get it right? Whey does it always wait until people know exactly how many votes are needed to swing an election one way of the other before it reports?
22
The ballot design is totally fine. Seriously, if someone skipped over that unintentionally, they are not mentally qualified to vote or forgot their glasses. It's not like the names are hidden or part of another text paragraph without a clear separation or anything.
17
Isn't this suspiciously like the butterfly ballot in neighboring Palm Beach County that cost Al Gore the Presidency in 2000?
What are the chances Republicans are manipulating the ballot in Democratic counties of Florida to steal close elections?
29
Well a ridiculous amount of space is given to not just unnecessary instructions but unnecessary instructions in multiple languages. That sort of thing needs to be in mailed election guides. Ballot papers need to be clear and uncluttered: Name, Party, Space for an X. Instructions need to be totally separate and read and understood before the voter well before he/she gets down to marking their choice. That would avoid this jigsaw/maze style ballot.
38
Poor /misleading ballot design ... by design?
It's nuts.
Here's a thought, however, as this seems a problem here to stay:
all community organizers, for each party / candidate / race should get sample ballots in front of neighborhood groups, first-time voter populations, etc., etc. AHEAD of election. Many are also published in local / neighborhood newspapers (or they used to be).
Have people get familiar with the ballot BEFORE they head to the polls, etc.
A rehearsal is well worth the time.
33
Florida does not want Scott as Senator. I live in Naples, as does Scott, a very wealthy town, although I'm not wealthy, just lucky. Do you know where Scott lives? 3150 Gordon Drive. The priciest section of Naples. His real estate taxes for this one house, in a state where taxes are low, is $98,000.00
19
So Rick Scott is accusing Broward County of fraud, when the "fraud" is the reason he won the election? I hope an upstanding citizen like Rick Scott is gracious enough to denounce this "fraud" and allow the voters of Broward County to have a do-over, even though it will cost him the election.
21
Wasn't questionable ballot design involved in the 2000 presidential election fiasco? Should there be nationwide guidelines to govern this?
31
This doesn't really seem like a "Butterfly Ballot" situation. My guess is that you just had a lot of people focused on the governor's race (in both senses of the term) who cast votes for that office but not for the senate seat.
6
The Lee County FL ballot was designed so that the Republican candidate was listed first in every race. That certainly seemed rather blatant.
32
It's old, research -based , wisdom in the design of print ads, that the lower left hand corner of the page is pretty much dead space. The eye starts at top , left as with any page of text all the way back to school books. It then tends to travel accross the page if there's nothing to drag attention back to the left( in this case only a block of non- english text irrelevant to many readers), finishing at bottom right, where in ads the company logo, strap line or product shot is usually placed..... a good chance then that English speakers in particular missed the Senate Race vote in Broward County.
32
There's a simple design solution to that Florida ballot. Each section should have had a large number in front of it. So "United States Senator" would have been #1, "Representatives to Congress" #2, etc. If a voter started with #3, they'd realize there was a #1 and #2 that they missed.
17
Bill Nelson frittered away this election. He was sleepwalking when Rick Scott was out campaigning. If Nelson loses, his lackluster performance is the only reason.
11
The voting irregularities in Florida seem to be the norm rather accidental. If it turns out that the ballot form was designed to suppress votes then a runoff election with an easy to use ballot is a must. Florida officials are responsible for the election process. Since there appears to be a pattern perhaps there is systemic voter fraud being practiced at the state level. Suggest that the punishment fit the crime. Florida should be given an 18 year timeout from national elections. We could call it the “Hanging Chad” rule.
14
Election after election there are examples of poorly designed ballots. Standardize the ballots and join the majority of the world’s democracies.
23
It bothers me that a "undercount" is considered a ballot problem or a voter error. Before electronic voting machines, I was able to deliberately NOT vote in a race or in a question on the ballot. I could simply not punch a hole or deliberately punch both holes yes and no.
It wasn't an error,but was meant to express displeasure with the choices offered. Why is this aspect of undercount not being considered?
10
Our “fill in the bubble” ballots here in Fresno are very similar to the Florida ballot shown in the article.
I voted, but I deliberately did not vote for someone for every position on the ballot. The assumption should be that if someone cast a ballot, but did not vote for the office of US Senator, then their choice to not vote for any candidate was deliberate.
5
Am I missing something? If this had been a ballot design issue, wouldn't it have affected all voters in the county? Republican ballots should have a similar undervote problem if all voters had trouble locating the senator choices. Unless there was a special Republican-only voter training class or Floridian democrats are blind, the only explanation is that the ballots are being misread (in either not counting Dem senator votes, or counting Repub under votes as Scott votes) or the ballots were altered after submitted.
9
"Broward County has reported about 25,000 fewer votes cast for Senate than for governor, a difference of about 3.7 percent. That means voters left their Senate choice blank, or the choice was not counted because of a tabulation error like an equipment problem. This is highly unusual, and there’s nothing like this discrepancy elsewhere in the state."
This is highly suspicious. Something happened in Broward County, which is a Democratic stronghold. There should be an investigation before the courts set any deadline for recounts.
Perhaps Governor Scott knows what happened.
A guilty dog barks the loudest.
26
Always try to vote at a location with electronic machines whenever possible. Ballot design problems...solved.
2
Boy -- Bad design.
Why so complicated? Simple grid -- makes it easy -- impossible to mess up.
4
What literally is wrong with Florida. How many more national elections will they mess up and keep the country hanging on while they get their act together after the actual election. Was Rick Scott not the governor for this election? Is he not responsible for a smooth running state at all levels including the State elections.
23
Let’s stop treating citizens like babies. Perhaps voters should take their franchise seriously and study a sample ballot prior to their entering a voting booth. With all the constitutional amendments, retention of Supreme Court Justices, local races and other miscellaneous issues on the ballot, not to mention the “big” races, it’s imperative be familiar with the candidates and the issues before voting. This preparation insures that the citizen votes with confidence. It would also speed up the lines for waiting to vote.
11
If people missed voting on the Senate it's only because they rushed their vote and did not pay due diligence to the ballot.
2
I’m a Democrat and I don’t find the ballot confusing upon a quick read - but I’m reading it in the comfort of my home. In a polling place I may feel differently. The point is this: voting is so crucial that experts need to make exercising this fundamental right as easy as possible. But event that doesn’t explain the historical incompetence of Florida when it comes to elections.
8
The design didn't make people miss voting for senate. Inattentive people who did not read the whole ballot (however poorly designed) would hold sole responsibility for this...if it is indeed the reason for the current situation. Voting is serious business and deserves the same kind of attention as signing a contract or a loan.
16
@Frank
if voting was a serious business in this country elections would not take place on a Tuesday and only simple paper ballots would be used and no stupid machine at any point...
1
It doesn't matter much what we or others think of the ballot design - numbers strongly suggest the design made people miss voting for senate.
I don't know how much kickbacks, benefits or whatever local officials get from being able to control the election system, but it would be the downfall of US democracy the way it's been going, and you won't get much sympathy or understanding from other countries. I really can't think of any countries which keeps the election system so chaotic.
13
Hey, I'm a lifelong Democrat and I don't think the ballot is so horribly designed (I expect to get a little flack about this statement). It's not the best, but I expected much worse when reading the article.It seems, especially with Florida's history of confusing ballots, that it would serve the citizens to publish sample ballots so everyone could know what it looks like.
As other Oregonians have said, we have a vote-by-mail system so we can peruse our ballots for two weeks before mailing them or taking them to a drop-off site (such as a public library branch). We also have a voters' pamphlet that lists all the candidates and ballot measures. For the measures, there is the actual language, a statement by a committee of legislators about the intent of the bill, a plain language statement and statement of whether it will add any costs to taxpayers. And for a fee, organizations or groups can purchase space to submit a statement in favor or against the measure. Those are also very helpful to read and to see which measures or bonds various organizations (some of my favorites: League of Women Voters, 1000 Friends of Oregon, Audubon Society) favor.
Regarding not trusting the post office to handle ballots, we can sign up on an elections center website to track our ballots: when the ballot is received, when it is counted. Although I really missed going to the polls on election day, I now think our system makes for more informed and thoughtful voters.
31
@Helen Wheels
Same here in Washington.
I thought I would miss going to the poll but I don't. Sometimes we drop off our ballots on election day and there is a shared spirit of voting.
All the news of Election Day with people being forced to wait for hours, not enough equipment, broken equipment, errors in registration, absurd exact match in signatures...seems like a civil rights violation.
28
@helen wheels
Thanks for your input, I’m going to push our local officials to institute a tracking system like Oregon, because I’m in the dark as to wether my ballot was counted. I know i made a choice for senator, but sure seems like it may not have been counted.
17
@Helen Wheels I´m a Washingtonian who votes by mail in every election though I live in the Netherlands. I talk with other expat Americans from various states and am amazed at the trouble they have getting a ballot from their state. Oregon and Washington´s vote by mail system is excellent.
21
There should be one National voting system with a well planned design, different colors for local and national races and colors for different parties.
Mayor races could have larger print.
Election Day should be a holiday as it is I never many countries so people feel less rushed.
But not all politicians want voter participation.
Sad.
28
You'd think that with every type of ballot design possible, we would have come up with a standard approach to designing ballots, all over the country. I recently moved and went from a ballot that clear "yes" and "no" boxes to fill in, to a ballot with broken arrows pointing to your selection that you filled in to complete the arrow. I don't know why we cannot have a unified ballot style at least across an entire state. I also feel like ballots for President and US Congress should be physically separate from ballots for all other local candidates or initiatives/propositions.
20
The ballot looks clear and straight-forward to me (and is similar to the ballot I used in New York). Sure, you have to look it over carefully to make sure you understand the instructions and where the different races are.
Sure, it could be designed better- the whole process of voting could be more efficient, vote counting less prone to error. But, anyone who cannot decipher a simple ballot like this is not in mental shape to vote...
10
@augias84
I agree. I’m a registered Democrat living in Broward (moved from Miami Beach 2 yrs. ago). My wife and I had mail in ballots, which were 5 pages- double sided- and was VERY easy to read and follow. All we had to do was read left to right, top to bottom.
The fact that the entire county is displayed as pink in the embedded map of this article leads me to believe this is a tabulation era.
Let’s say that half a million people in Broward voted. Now (roughly) about 4% on average are under votes. That’s about 20,000 people not reading properly.
Most people who are invested enough to bother voting are literate enough to read this ballot.
4
Fair enough. If all the ballots were the same in every district. Funny how stuff Ike this only happens in districts that lean Democrat.
3
@augias84 T'were it so simple...
Folks like you were why personal computers were something of a nightmare for folks until Apple came along with the Mac. Sure, you understood it. Anyone who approaches things differently or is dyslexic or was in a hurry or messed up for any reason "is no tin mental shape to vote."
Good design helps unleash the best in us, and we are increasingly finding it is good for Democracy.
If those went into the optical scanners like the ones we have in NYC isn't it more likely that the scanner failed to read that section of the ballot? How could it be that only a handful of election districts, in only one county, missed the question? Either the scanner didn't read that section or something has been tampered with. They need to pull out the paper copies and COUNT them. I personally hate not knowing how the scanner read my ballot. Instead of that generic "your vote was counted," I'd like to see what the scanner read. Something this important requires transparency at every step.
59
@AP The scanners might very well be the problem, altho not quite as you describe.
Down here, each page is scanned individually and feedback is given on each page. It is possible to cancel a scanned ballot and go back to correct or bypass problems.
But there is no feedback on empty entries.
One problem was the sensitivity of the scanner relative to the bubbles filled in by voters. The machine required a high degree of accuracy, with both under and over filled bubbles rejected. In my experience it was far too much for casual and elderly voters.
16
Are the two parties allowed a look at the actual Ballots in the weeks or days, prior to an Election?
9
I lived most of my adult life in Florida. We always received a sample ballot in the mail well before the election.
There was plenty of time to look it over and call the Supervisor of Elections office if you had any questions.
10
I'm sorry but if people omit such an important choice as a senator, they are not taking voting seriously enough. Ballots should be examined much more carefully than suggested by those who want designs which draw the eye. It's not that hard to find the senator choices on this ballot, and if someone knows anything about the election they should be looking for it. If they don't know to look for a senator, why are they voting?
17
@svetik Had you actually seen - or USED the the ballot, as I did, you might not be so absolute in your opinion.
First- there was no rhyme or reason to the layout- far greater focus- indeed the bulk of the ballot- focused on statewide constitutional amendments, followed by a slew of local races.
Second- just like his demeanor and record, our under-the radar senator was hurt by his under-the radar placement on the ballot itself.
Third- filling out the bubbles was a chore in itself when it came time for the machine to scan one's completely ballot. My bubble-filling skills did not meet the scanner's needs and I had to go back twice to fix various entries. I persevered, but in a warm, overcrowded room where every seat, booth, machine, etc was constantly occupied, it was stressful. ( A sidenote: the paper ballot was much longer than the table provided to complete the ballot. Wrestling with the fixed pen and avoiding the gaps in the table was in itself a chore.)
I voted during the early voting period. You had to be there. And countless people opining on the mechanics and why and wherefores were not.
58
@RKP
My wife and I now live in Broward and mailed our ballots. I know we “bubbled” the choice for senator, but now I’m worried the scanner rejected it because it wasn’t filled properly.
And the whole county? This cannot be a confusing ballot; it must be machine error.
3
If I want to vote for a candidate, and can't find him, I'll ask. People who didn't bother to find the Senate race, probably did not care enough about it. So their non-vote accurately reflects their (non-)preference.
12
The problem is reminiscent of 2000 election
when ballot design cost Al Gore the election.
In that election the voters had difficulty in
finding the candidate they wanted to vote
for. In a heavy democratic county Pat Buchannan
gotlot more votes than reasonably expected
for a conservative. Some problems don't
go away particularly in Florida.
51
@s.khan
That ballot was designed by a Democratic Supervisor of Elections in a Democratic county.
@s.khan
Why would it be that people who wanted to vote for Buchanan were able to do so, but people who wanted to vote for Gore were not? Sounds like a protest vote for the third party by Democrats who didn't like Gore. They knew Buchanan wasn't going to win.
I have a hard time understanding why, except for candidates peculiar to a specific county, the ballot in the entire state is not the same.
It cries out for a federal system where a federal entity runs the elections for federal office and the state runs the elections for anything other than a federa office.
63
@Brad
Typical liberal response - there must be solution and it must be Federalizing aka centralizing everything!!
We live in a republic. It is up to each state to run their elections as good - or as bad - as they choose. Deal with it.
Did they bother to consult and follow the advice of a skilled, experienced, and professionally-trained graphic design company? And perhaps a human factors expert?
As the saying goes, if we can send a human to the moon, a robot to Mars, and a space ship into interstellar space and close to the sun, shouldn’t we humans be able to create and use a well-designed and functioning ballot? Do registrara of voters and other elections officials ever bothered to consult one another across county and state lines? If something has worked very well elsewhere, is it necessary for each county to reinvent the ballot and voting system wheel and to do so in each major election?
52
@Duh American society has many virtues, but coordination is not one of them. There are fifty states, and each state has its own rules and regulations, and then there are more than 3,000 counties, with each county being its own little fiefdom. The result: essentially no intercounty coordination.
6
@Duh
Interesting that this happened in a voting district where the ballot was designed by Democrats.
The ballot seems pretty clear to me. If someone can't figure out that ballot, maybe their vote shouldn't count anyway.
24
@Joannie You might think that is the case, but take my own Los Angeles County ballot. I voted by mail. I had to "google" whether or not to use pen or pencil. You would have thought those instructions would have been on the ballot. As it turns out you could use either pen or pencil.
These under counts point to a definite problem (cheating).
4
Please see RP's comment. The ballot was very long, designed in long columns, with each item in three languages. I have a Master's degree in Information Science, and don't consider myself stupid. I too had a vote by mail ballot. After filling it out in the convenience of my home, and about to take it to a drop off place, I realized I did not recall voting for senator. Indeed I had not. I thought that first column was all instructions. I mentioned this to several people who voted early in very long lines, and they said they had done the same thing, but also fortunately discovered their mistake. I would say many others didn't realize they had missed it especially those who voted on election day. It was an unfortunate design, but don't criticize the voters.
2
@Joannie
What you are suggesting sounds like a literacy test, a strategy of the past that took advantage of former slaves' not being allowed to learn how to read. When I look at that ballot, it seems to me pretty clear to me that the election committee could have come up with a better design and maybe they don't deserve to have been in charge anyway.
1
I live and vote in Broward County. Anyone here can request a mail ballot, vote early during two weeks of early voting, or vote on election day. However, despite making it easy to cast a ballot - the ballots themselves need work. This particular ballot in question was 5 pages long front and back on large legal sized paper (the photo makes it appear smaller than the ballots actually were). Aside from the marquee races for Senate, Congress, and Governor there were other State officials (Agriculture Commission, State Senate, State Congress), 13 Constitutional Amendments, numerous Broward Charter questions, other local precinct level races (e.g. city commissioner. Note there are 30 different cities within Broward County) etc. all in three different languages. I generally consider myself a smart person but I will admit that the first time through my mail ballot I missed the Senate race so it doesn't surprise me at all that people who did not study the ballot closely might miss it.
I suppose it would be fitting for the Democrats downfall to be other Democrats. The Supervisor of Elections is an elected position here and Brenda Snipes was recently re-elected so she can't be fired. They definitely need to do a better job with ballot design in the future. This obviously isn't the first time they have had issues and it would be good for them to do focus groups or test runs with voters like someone suggested.
140
It baffles me why every state does not follow the Oregon & Washington state systems of vote-by-mail. We have about 2 weeks to nicely study the ballot page, as well as having recovery procedures if needed. Perfect paper trail.
What vote-by-mail does to alleviate the type of problem of erroneous data due to ballot complexity is .... provide plenty of time in your own home to get it right.
Voting methodology is very good, as long as it doesn't lead to shabby results. Vote-by-mail definitely seems to work.
181
@Feldman In the past I was not necessarily a big fan of vote by mail. But my experience in this election has made me rethink that. Despite having read a huge amount in the months leading up to the election, when confronted with the ballot I was faced with 2 municipal referendum questions that totally perplexed me. I hadn't read anything about them, and wasn't really sure what their purpose was. In the end, I just left them blank. That would have been prevented if I had the ballot ahead of time. Yes, I could have gotten an absentee ballot, but I didn't expect that surprise.
36
I don't trust the mail system here, and I think for people who have transportation issues, getting to the post office isn't necessarily easier. Luckily for us, you can get "sample ballots" ahead of time that have all the people running and voting issues, just like the real thing. If anything, I'd think that voting in person (there were still paper ballots) would make logistics easier since most of the ballots are in one place.
7
To @Feldman. Respectfully, having worked in the post office, I would not trust it to deliver my ballot. Instead, I would predict shenanigans of some sort, such as "lost" ballots.
Please accept this political axiom: The easier it is to cheat in an election, the more cheating there will be.
The safest election system is one that has the fewest people, and the shortest amount of time, between the vote (here, the filling in of the bubble by the voter) and the counting of the vote (done by machine when the voter feeds the ballot into a machine at his precinct voting location). This makes voting by mail the least safe (lots of people and time between the vote and the count), and it makes fill-in-the-bubble ballots that are counted at the moment the voter feeds the paper into the machine, the most safe. (Other aspects of the safety of this system are the paper trail that allows an easy recount, and the fact that the number of ballots cast in the precinct should equal the number of voters who signed in at the precinct.)
The Oregon & Washington vote-by-mail systems are an invitation to voter fraud.
10
Our elections system is a gigantic mess.
This is an eminently solvable problem. Get some designers - real ones, people who design stuff that people use, there are lots, I used to be one - and implement a standardized system across every state.
It appears that people in Broward were driving ballots around in private cars?
If there was any semblance of political will our voting problems could be solved in a matter of months, but each side is bent on preserving any chance to sneak an advantage whenever possible. It's just cutthroat business as usual here in the good old US of A.
78
@Dan
Professional designers? How hard is this? Fill in a circle, just like an SAT test. And if you can’t fill in a circle, should we really count your vote? (spoiler alert: no).
@Dan Agreed. Just don't get the ones responsible for the redesigned Page One of the NY Times.
SO - Florida leads the way again -- and the Democrats may lose a seat due in part to the ineptitude of a Democratic elections supervisor, who apparently was originally appointed by Jeb Bush?
How could an area that has messed up so spectacularly in the past manage to do it again?
How could it be possible when people all over the country have been working on ballot issues that having a well designed ballot is not considered important?
I also hate to say this - but the ancient mechanical machines worked awfully well - except that there were no longer parts for repairs.
77
@cheryl
The Supervisor of Elections of each county in Florida is elected. No governor -- Jeb Bush or any other -- appoints a Supervisor of Elections.
@cheryl What works even better is what we have here in Canada: paper ballots that you mark with a pen or pencil, fold up, and put in a ballot box while election officials a scrutineers from each party watch. The scrutineers also watch the count.
1
If design of the ballot cost Nelson a seat it should. If Nelson's staff missed this they deserve to be sending out resumes. Talk about Not Being Ready for Prime Time. Spending millions on Ads only to tripped up by a poorly designed ballot? Talk about missing the mountain because of the trees.
19
Nelson nor his team have nothing to do with ballot design; that’s entirely up to each county’s Supervisor of Elections.
64
Ballots are different in each municipality. The candidates do not design them.
4
@Cynthia Skogsberg You cannot tell me they could not have previewed the ballot before hand. The ballots had to be sent to a printer to be printed. There is no way Nelson nor you can excuse this away. There are 67 counties in Florida. After the hanging chads of 2000 nothing in the entire process should be taken for granted. Insterad of making excuses how about fixing it.
It could also be intentional miscounting by the Republicans in control of the elections.
But there's an easy way to see if the design of the ballot had anything to do with it, if you're a journalist. Contact voters and ask them. Poll enough so that the probability of finding some would be high. Or put out a call on media for voters to report if this happened. They would remember.
88
@Hdb
My dear there are not “Republicans in control of elections” in Broward or Palm Beach counties, which are heavy Democratic strongholds. Both election supervisors - Brenda Snipes and Susan Bucher - are Democrats.
@Hdb
It could also be intentional miscounting by the Democrats in control of the elections.
Afterall Broward is left leaning and the Election commissioner is a Democrat.
Sort of funny, the Senate portion of the ballot was ON THE LEFT. Maybe the Democrats are so angry with the right, they forget to look left. lol
@Hdb
The counting is done by an elected official in the county, and she is a Democrat.
1
Human factors engineers should be designing ballots. They need to be tested by giving test voters the ballot and a list of votes to cast. They should be able to express their choice correctly to 99.99% accuracy. I’m guessing most election boards in the country assume anyone can design a ballot. They can’t.
196
The layout of the ballot is most likely determined by the ballot counting software. The Elections Board would have little or no control over that. Also, the order that races must appear on the ballot is probably governed by state law, so that federal offices have the highest position, followed by state and county candidates, followed by questions on amendment changes, tax increases, etc.
4
@Djt
I agree, but 99.99%, would mean testing 10,000 people for each of the thousand of different ballots around the country.
Another solution is simply to have a scan machine, that you place your finished ballot in. It displays a message.
"All Election Contests Voted for - Please deposit your ballot in Box" or "Need Glasses? You missed 5 Contest" Review, Correct, or if intended, deposit your ballot in Box"
1
@NYC Traveler. If that is the case, the software is garbage. There is no technical reason that a ballot has to be difficult for humans to be readable by machine. Also I have to wonder why on earth a ballot would be so huge?
3
The government should hire more designers -- at the state and federal level. It would not be wasted money.
39
@Anthony-Republicans voted down the Democrats funding bill to secure elections.
14
Arlington County, Virginia, is spectacularly good with its ballot design, registration system, traffic control, and processing of completed ballots. I'm an Arlington voter, not involved with the design or the polling places at all, but I encourage any jurisdiction that wants to see a terrific system to look at ours. It would work for large and small precincts.
84
The candidates' advisors should have seen that ballot and complained about all the clutter.
That county's elections should be placed in receivership.
71
I looked at the ballot and I saw ovals next to choices. If there's an oval to punch, there's a choice next to it. Sometimes the electorate is not up to the task. This is what we get when we let everyone vote. We humans are imperfect. It should be no surprise that we vote imperfectly.
20
@Ed L. I voted in Miami on a ballot very similar to the ones used in Broward and you don't punch out the ovals, they are filled in with pen. The ballot I used looks like the one in the article with the key exception that the first column is instructions and the second the list of candidates so people didn't miss any of the races.
39
@Ed L.
"This is what we get when we let everyone vote. "
So some people should not vote because of bad ballot design? That makes no sense.
1
Fire everyone involved in the design of the ballot!
Repeat the election in this county, it will take a day and people would be fine in spending another hour. Minimum civic duty!
This is not a partisan issue. I would say exactly the same if the problem arose, say in Arizona where the Democrats are ahead by .5 percent.
98
@Blunt
The State would have had to have had a law in place before the election in order to allow a do over because the losers realized that their voters were not smart enough to fill in bubbles.
It is beginning to look like trump and his republicans are somewhat right. There is serious voter fraud in our country. The problem is that the fraud is coming from the top down not from the voters up! Deliberate ill designed ballots, onerous voter ID rules, purging of registered voter rolls, gerrymandering, etc. The list goes on. Time to establish a uniform voting methodology for the country: traceable paper ballots, federal districts determined by bi-partisan committees, etc. Stop administrative voter fraud.
369
@LarSim, that is precisely NOT what Trump et al. are complaining about. It is not VOTER fraud. Please keep your concepts straight. This doesn't excuse their false accusations.
I'm not saying there aren't things wrong with our vote count. We saw that in 2000 and not a thing was done to fix it. You can blame both Democrats and Republicans for incompetence and possibly trying to skew elections, but not in this case, since the problem in Broward seems to be hurting the Democrats.
35
@LarSim When the fraud comes from the top down, it's not voter fraud, it's election fraud. Big difference. Voter fraud is virtually non-existent, despite what this administration might broadcast. Election fraud, on the other hand, has been going on since the beginning of elections. It is why we must have independent election commissions in each district, and state.
1
@Thomas Zaslavsky LarSim's first 2 sentences were ironic, not an endorsement of the voter fraud claims made by Republicans.
2
Man those republicans are smart. They were able to manipulate the ballot design in the left leaning county of Broward to lop off 3% of vote total.
Guess my question is, were the Democrats asleep or out to (a free) lunch?
37
Ignoring your inflammatory allusion to Democrats enjoying a free taxpayer funded lunch, I agree that ballot design probably cost Senator Nelson many votes. That’s just rank incompetence. And it would be the same if it was a Republican election supervisor. The goal is to design a ballot that’s easy to comprehend that maximizes voter turnout. Period.
@chimanimani
What is this "free lunch" stuff? Why are Democrats, who represent the hardest working, most productive people in the country, always being accused of wanting free lunch?
Maybe you are confused, and are in fact referring to the Red States, who get all our money.
3
@chimanimani
The Broward County ballot design was the responsibility of the elected Democrat who is currently unable to count them.
New York's ballot comes in at no. 2 for Worst Design - 2 pages, guaranteed to cause confusion and scanner jams. Who thinks these things up? They're a worse menace than the Russians.
48
@RJ: It was one page where I live.
9
@RJ 2 pages does not cause any more scanner jams than 2 people voting with 1 page each. If someone can't handle the fact that there were 2 pages and that they had to mark both, then perhaps they're not intelligent enough to vote. The problem with the two page design was that voters were required to separate them (not that that was hard), but they should have come pre-separated.
The bigger problem was that many polling places did not have enough scanners and there were multi-hour waits (my polling place in Queens had no waits). Also, I noticed that the scanners are actually capable of generating a small receipt, but for some reason NYC doesn't use that function. While the paper ballots can serve as an audit mechanism, I'd also like a receipt that shows me that the scanner registered my votes correctly.
Also, IMO, in the case of any close results, ALL of the paper ballots should be re-scanned to see if they garner the same result as when voters scanned their ballots.
But even with those changes, our voting system is archaic. Every voter should receive a quasi-ID voting card with a machine-readable bar code. We should have electronic voting machines. Instead of signing a book, you'd scan the card at the voting machine and the machine would generate a screen with appropriate candidates for where the voter lives. In this way, one could vote anywhere - not just as their local polling place and I believe this would increase turnout.
5
@Thomas Zaslavsky: New York City had two pages because of three ballot measures on which we had to vote.
1
Florida wins again for Worst Designed Ballot! I would have missed that too. Why were ALL the candidates' names in such teeny print?
The clunky old voting machines did it better...
105
What's the matter with that state? It can't seem to run smooth elections.
108
@Brian Pottorff
It's not a problem with the state -- it's a problem with the two Democratic counties in the southeast part of the state.
There are 67 counties in Florida and the problems are always with these two counties.
8
@Ian-by design?
@Brian Pottorff
Too many New Yorkers in Broward. The rest of the state does fine.
1
All that is clear is that any discrepancy in voting in Florida that is contrary to the interests of the Democratic Party needs to be litigated tooth and nail to the bitter end if it means no one takes the disputed office until the next election.
The criminal corruption of the voting process in Florida in 2000 gave the world George W. Bush and the criminal, and criminally stupid invasion of Iraq, which resulted in the completely unnecessary and purposeless deaths of around one million innocent Iraqis. The war also destabilised the whole region and the abject failure of the invasion tied the hands of Barack Obama in responding to the chaos Bush left him after he retreated into well-deserved obscurity.
That election also gave us the Global Financial Crisis, again, completely optional and unnecessary. It gave us the collapse of worldwide efforts to confront climate change and it enriched many of the awful people who still populate American and world politics. The stolen 2000 election was probably the worst example of political corruption in human history, at least in terms of its consequences.
So fight on Democrats in Florida and Georgia and anywhere else there is even a hint of corruption by the Republicans leading to a corrupted result. When the Democrats again hold complete power in the White House and Congress, they must create an independent Electoral Commission which controls every aspect of every election for federal office and stop GOP corruption forever.
439
@Colin McKerlie, you say, "The stolen 2000 election was probably the worst example of political corruption in human history, at least in terms of its consequences." The consequences probably being the collapse of the world ecosystem and the uninhabitability of the entire tropics, you are correct. But nothing will be done. Republicans' excuse: "We can't afford it, since we gave our future tax revenues to big business and the billionaires."
206
@Colin McKerlie while I agree with you regarding the invasion of Iraq and general tax policy of the Bush administration, the financial crisis would have happened under a president Gore as well, as the deregulation of the financial markets first happened under the Clinton administration. The Bush and then Obama governments did as decent a job at handling the crisis as could have been expected given its magnitude. The seed for the crisis was planted in the late 90s.
8
@augias84, let's add to the blame game that Clinton only signed a bill that was forced upon him by Republicans (with some Democrats as well). It's called the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (all Republicans).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gramm%E2%80%93Leach%E2%80%93Bliley_Act
23
Voters may have been confused by seeing Republican Governor Scott's name on the Senate line. Perhaps they were seeking a Democratic candidate for governor rather than their long-established Democratic senator, Bill Nelson, and gave up in despair.
32