14 November 2000
Date: Tue, 14 Nov 2000 13:38:19 +0100
To: InfoDesign@list.design-inst.nl
From: InfoDesign <InfoDesign@list.design-inst.nl>
Subject: InfoD: Article about information design of voting systems
The US Presidential election focuses the attention on Information design. Susan King Roth has published an article on this topic in Information Design Journal: 'Disenfranchised by design: voting systems and the election process' (volume 9, number 1, 1998, pages 29-38). We have made this article available online. You can see it at:
http://www.informationdesign.org/pubs/roth1998.html
Summary
Susan Roth describes two studies in Franklin County, Ohio. In the first, the mechanical lever voting machine was compared with an 'electronic ballot' device in which switches are embedded in a surrounding print-out. The second study examined the punch-card ballot, not that dissimilar to the system which has cause so much fuss in Palm Beach County in recent days.
In both cases, Roth's study found serious problems in human factors and information design, compromising the ability of people to make accurate and informed electoral choices. This article points to endemic problems of usability in the US electoral process, ultimately driven by the large number of choices which a US voter is required to make at the polling booth, and the over-riding concern of election officials to make vote-counting faster by means of technology -- to the detriment of usability by voters.
Kind regards,
Karel van der Waarde
Editor IDJ
waarde@glo.be
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