MetaFilter posts tagged with voting and ballots

Nader Challenges Black Box Voting

snakey — Fri, 05 Nov 2004 20:42:00 -0800

absentee ballot fun

taumeson — Fri, 01 Oct 2004 09:49:59 -0800

So I saw this image online (of a Michigan absentee ballot...which arrow is for Kerry, and which is for Bush?) and it made me think, what the hell is going on with this election? On the one hand, I'm told your vote might just be worthless if you use electronic voting machines but on the other hand the alternative (in my state, at least) is to use an absentee ballot, which, according to some, might be easier, if only because I can have members of a political party help me fill it out.

A better way to vote?

Turtles all the way down — Mon, 28 Jun 2004 20:57:46 -0800

Looks like a minority liberal government for Canada. The entire process will have been completed in a single day. The voters used pencils to mark X's on paper ballots, which were stuffed into ballot boxes then counted by hand. Despite the differences in population, is there a lesson here for our southern neighbours?

Quinn — Tue, 05 Nov 2002 11:27:40 -0800

Are we using the worst voting procedure? "Voting theorists argue that plurality voting is one of the worst of all possible choices." Plurality voting, in which each voter selects one canidate, is vulnerable to a third party spoiler (Nader) or with many canidates can lead to the (near) election of a candidate most voters despise (le Pen). Some alternative voting systems include instant runoff where canidates are ranked by voters, a Borda count where voters assigns points to each canidate, or approval system where voters vote for as many canidates as they like. (via argmax.com)

tiaka — Sat, 02 Dec 2000 12:50:57 -0800

When you're an aiga member they send you e-mail, I usualy don't read them, because they're accouncements of conferences and such, but this one was about Chicago enlisting the help of AIGA to design new election ballots. 'Some possibilities for making Chicago ballots more user-friendly include enlarging candidates' names, changing the font size, altering the color of pages, making wider ballot booklets.' Since I couldn't find the article on-line, I'll just cut-n-paste the e-mail inside. :)

dhartung — Wed, 29 Nov 2000 19:27:05 -0800

Chicago to enlist graphic designers for friendlier ballots. [free reg may be req'd] There's been a bunch of discussion about the usability problems with various voting systems, notably punch-card ballots. Chicago didn't have anything as dramatic as a "butterfly" prexy ballot or two pages' worth of candidates, but we still had close to 120,000 discards from 2.1 million votes -- and when compared with jurisdictions using other systems, there's little evidence to suggest that voters are skipping the presidential ballot. That's just how bad manual punch card technology is. Even if we can't get rid of them just yet, at least we can make sure they aren't confusing. Did I just post the twenty-sixth link on Metafilter today? GO AWAY. METAFILTER IS FULL. :)

holgate — Sun, 19 Nov 2000 01:01:10 -0800

"The rules of this game were set by the people, underwritten by the people, financed or not." Yet another opportunity for the British Observer to put the US newspapers to shame, with an closely-argued, even-handed reflection on the fun in Florida. "The system, full of inefficiencies and coagulations, may stink, but it is also a system which belongs to the voters who now complain so shrilly about it."

rushmc — Sat, 11 Nov 2000 21:07:30 -0800

Change the ballots yourself—don't wait for the government to fix things!