Thursday, December 18, 2008

Could vote this way for years


Is this a Coleman vote? I concluded that I couldn't tell what the hell it is. There are just too many ambiguities in the full ballot (alternative link). For example:


There's just no consistent marking at all, so I would reject this ballot entirely.

One of the major flaws in the way we vote is that we never get our ballots back graded. They go in the hopper, and we never know whether they actually count as we intended them.

The voter who cast this ballot could cast similar ballots for years. Judging by the almost random but obviously intended marks over the printed rectangles at the left margin, he's not very capable of learning how to do it right, but there are many unsophisticated voters who could learn with a little more feedback.

A scanner that would show each voter its count of his or her marks would go a long way toward helping us actually get the government we want.

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