Florida Voters Still Can't Read A Ballot

After the 2000 recount and the infamous "butterfly ballot", you'd think that Florida elections officials would be very careful in their ballot design. Not so. Once again in this past election a poorly designed ballot may have cost a Democrat a seat in congress (h/t Captain Ed):

Florida election officials announced yesterday that an examination of voting software did not find any malfunctions that could have caused up to 18,000 votes to be lost in a disputed Congressional race in Sarasota County, and they suggested that voter confusion over a poor ballot design was mainly to blame.

The finding, reached unanimously by a team of computer experts from several universities, could finally settle last fall’s closest federal election. The Republican candidate, Vern Buchanan, was declared the winner by 369 votes, but the Democrat, Christine Jennings, formally contested the results, claiming that the touch-screen voting machines must have malfunctioned.

Legal precedents make it difficult to win a lawsuit over ballot design, but a substantial error in the software might have been grounds for a new election.

The questions about the electronic machines arose because many voters complained that they had had trouble getting their votes to register for Ms. Jennings, and the machines did not have a back-up paper trail that might have provided clues about any problems. The report said some voters might have accidentally touched the screen twice, thus negating their votes, while most of the others probably overlooked the race on the flawed ballot.

Automation in the form of touch screen voting machines is not a friend to many older people who aren't used to those new-fangled computers. If they push a button and don't get an immediate response, they're likely to push it again, or just start pushing all the buttons until something happens. Giving them a poorly designed ballot just complicates things.

The Dem may well have won in this race, but it's too late for that now. Many Dems still think Gore would have won Florida if confusion over the butterfly ballot hadn't led some folks to vote twice, or vote for the wrong candidate. (Were there really 3,000 Pat Buchanan supporters in Palm Beach County? I don't think so.)