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Politics Government

Repeat of Florida Butterfly Ballot 48

Posted by michael from the those-who-don't-study-history dept.
More Trouble writes "The Michigan Absentee Ballot seems to be very 'confusing', a la the infamous Palm Beach, Florida Butterfly Ballot. Help!"
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Repeat of Florida Butterfly Ballot More

Repeat of Florida Butterfly Ballot

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  • Thank God for Small Favors, then. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Skyshadow ( 508 ) * on Friday October 01, 2004 @03:30PM (#10408371) Homepage
    Gee, it's a good thing that the polls aren't showing that the race in Michigan is almost tied or anything, right?

    Seriously, someone actually looked at this and decided it was okay?

  • It's been fixed already... (Score:5, Informative)

    by gtwreck ( 74885 ) on Friday October 01, 2004 @03:33PM (#10408396)
    Numerous reports state that the company that sent out the ballot already mailed corrections. Also, it appears to be limited in scope.

  • Man, that's messed up. That's way worse than the Florida ballot. It's really truly incorrect. At least with half a brain you could figure out the Florida ballot.

    Luckily it seems that properly printed ballots have been sent out to replace these incorrect ones...

  • See the whole ballot (Score:3, Informative)

    by waynegoode ( 758645 ) * on Friday October 01, 2004 @03:47PM (#10408550) Homepage
    You can see the whole ballot at The Daily Kos [dailykos.com].
    • I find it sad that anyone would want to use the straight party ticket (as depicted in the parent's link) and that the ballot even has one. How mindless do you have to be to not even consider each candidate on their own merits rather than just the party to which they belong?
      • I agree totally. Ever since the first time I saw a ballot with that I thought only idiots would use it. If you look at the candidates and your choice in each race is the same party, that's okay. Just blindly voting for candidates without even knowing who they are hurts democracy.

        In the SE, I think it is used mostly by Yellow-Dog Democrats. (They would vote for the Democrat even if it was a yellow dog.) There are a lot of these in Alabama. It's leftover from reconstruction. (Them Republican carpet-bag

      • The last time I went to vote there were over 40 positions up for election. Federal and state representatives, judges, justice of the peace, city council, school board, sheriff, county tax assessor, etc., etc. I have no idea who half of those people were, nor do I honestly have the time to research their various qualifications and suitability for the job. The cumulation of all those candidates is simply overwhelming. You HAVE to find the few positions for which you have the most interest and educate yourself

        • I've never voted straight party, but I did check into how it works. Obviously, if you choose Democrat, you have elected the Democrat in every position, but then if you go and select someone who isn't a Democrat, that overrides the straight ticket selection. So basicly, it is vote for the Democrat in every race unless I select someone else. It's a default that can be overriden.
    • That's not nearly as bad as the 2000 Florida ballot [taterbrains.com].
  • Don't blame me, I voted for
    ------------------- <==
  • Did the DEMS design it? After all they did design the florida one.
    • Wrong-o Buckeroo,

      The ballots are designed by committees of both republicans and democrats. And to make the FLA ballot worse, it was designed in a way that violated FLA state law. So, queue your favorite joke/diatribe here:

      * The intellegence of a meeting is inversly proportional to the number people in attendance.
      * Politician's aren't very smart. If they were, they'd be able to hold down a real honest job.
      * Neo-con FUD is used to blame democrats for all voting evils even though they conspire to limit acce
      • osted on Wed, Sep. 01, 2004
        Click here to find out more!

        Designer of infamous butterfly ballot loses re-election bid

        HILARY ROXE

        Associated Press

        WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore, the inventor of the butterfly ballot that became a national joke during the 2000 presidential recount, lost her re-election bid.

        With all precincts reporting, challenger Arthur Anderson had 91,134 votes, or 52 percent, while LePore had 85,601 votes, or 48 percent.

        Despite the loss, LePor
        • So then, you were wrong above; the "DEMS" did not design it, but rather one official who was a Democrat at one time but had a falling out with the party. In addition, I think it would be stretching it to say that this person was the only person who saw the new design. It was a fatally flawed design, of course; nobody is denying that, but it seems disingenuous to blame it on "the Democrats" (especially when it obviously did not work to their benefit!)

        • Note the telling phrase:

          A Democrat
          when she ran [...] in the 2000 election

          Emphasis mine. Before she ran in that election, she had been a Republican, then an Independant.

  • Ralph Nader is on there!

    How did that happen?
    • Ralph Nader is on the ballot because thousands of people signed petitions indicating they wanted him there. The Nader ticket is currently in court over dems trying to keep him off the ballot despite having met all requirements.
      http://www.votenader.org/ballot_acc ess/michigan/

  • It's Fixed. (Score:4, Informative)

    by nuxx ( 10153 ) on Friday October 01, 2004 @03:52PM (#10408606) Homepage
    If you read through the comments, you'll see info detailing that it has been fixed [dailykos.com].

    And no, this isn't the same as the 'butterfly ballot' or 'hanging chad' problems. Those were due to the stupidity of the user and a general inability to read and follow fairly simple directions. This is a typographical error.

    Still, I bet people will manage to screw up the connecting of an arrow.

    • Re:It's Fixed. (Score:3, Insightful)

      by fatmonkeyboy ( 257833 )
      Those were due to the stupidity of the user and a general inability to read and follow fairly simple directions.

      I hope you're not an engineer.

      The one thing I took away from my "User Interface" class in college is that if someone has trouble using something, it's the fault of the designer and not the fault of the user.

      I assume you have, at least once, pulled on a door, only to look down and see a big "PUSH" sign on it. A door can (and should) be designed so that you would never try to pull on it in the f
      • the voters didn't expect to need to read the directions in order to punch in the correct hole

        Yet these are the same people that will cause another 12 warning stickers (and $500,000,000 in payouts) to be placed on every day items so they don't try to use the snow-blower on the roof or use their crotch to hold boiling coffee or play catch with Jarts.

        I don't have a lot of sympathy for people that stupid. How can we even be sure they knew who they were voting for?

        • Let's say there are two way to design something. One way, you pick it up and you know how to use it. It just works...

          The other way, unless you read the instructions first you will break it if you try something simple and obvious.

          True, the people who broke the second one didn't read all the instructions first (these are the things that require your warning stickers). But why not do it the first way?

          There are some things that can not be made simple. But for those things that can be... KISS

          • Apparently the ballot wasn't tested with random people... but wait! Someone else mentioned that they've been using the same thing in California for 20 years. I don't know if that's true, but I have to think that this style of ballot is not unique to that location in Florida by virtue of the fact that the counting machinery that uses the ballots is probably used in a lot of places.

            Here's my theory: If the super-tight election had happened in almost every other state, the same kinds of problems would have
    • Of course people are going to screw up the connecting of an arrow: that election form has a terrible design.

      It is dead obvious that the district head of elections doesn't feel that the election is worth calling in someone with a solid record of excellence in form design.

      I suppose that's no surprise. More and more, it looks like the USA doesn't take its elections and democracy seriously. And, no, guys, that's not a troll: it's a fact.
  • Worse than the design, is the fact that you don't get to see the names of the electors you're actually voting for. I mean, their vote may be pretty much a foregone conclusion, but I'd like to know who I'm picking just in case.
    • In New York, you don't get the names of the electors on the ballot either, it just says "Electors for" in tiny print above the candidate's name.

      I don't know exactly how to find out this information. My first guess would be to call or write your state's Board of Elections. My second guess would be to call or write each statewide party headquarters in your state.

  • It's a screwed up ballot, BUT.... (Score:3, Informative)

    by DesScorp ( 410532 ) on Friday October 01, 2004 @04:30PM (#10408953) Journal
    ...please, no consipracy theories. It was a misprint, and it's been fixed. Plus, Bush is the one that didn't have a mark next to his name.
    • But in the event of a recount, where does the vote go? There's a notation for every candidate, it's just shifted down one. People who are going to vote for Bush would probably recognize the problem (since their notation is missing) and vote for the topmost one, which is correct for Bush. People voting for Kerry would not even look for the place to vote for Bush and would just mark the topmost one because it looks like it goes to Kerry.
  • I think that design was intend. Well first, the e-voting machines will take care of the Bush-Cheney count, so no need for an arrow there it will just add 65535 votes (unsigned of course) to their ticket on each machine. Second, "congressional" is probably a vote for all the candidates if there's no challengers, simple, I like. Third, it says "vote for not more than one". What if I want to vote for Kerry and Edwards? Definitely it's to confuse the savvy and well informed voter from messing up the election.

    Lo

  • Ballot spell-check (Score:3, Informative)

    by joranbelar ( 567325 ) on Friday October 01, 2004 @05:31PM (#10409525)
    Anyone notice that this ballot has the misspelled phrase "No Party Afiliation" under Nader? Official ballot, and they can't even spell right? ;)

  • That's my ballot (Score:2, Informative)

    by Piersnica ( 809544 )
    That is the ballot I received on September 29th. My congressman said less than 70 affected ballots were mailed out, and the company was printing new ones to be mailed out within a week. http://www.umich.edu/~mlafler It may be a small problem, but I feel people should be aware of it, and please make sure to check your ballot carefully when you vote this November.
  • do we really want people too fucking stupid to understand an arrow to be voting in the first place? if there were a way to design an intelligence test that would be unbiased along social and racial lines i would support requiring a test to register to vote, now i wouldn't expect a particularly high intelligence, but at the very least some glimmer of cognitive activity.

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