In case you hadn't been warned: It's starting again

[womzilla]

Florida. Where "democracy" is more than a promise, it's a threat.

Thanks to smofbabe for the pointer.

Palm Beach County's absentee ballot points voters to confusion, some say

"People aren't going to understand this," he said of the ballot, which instructs people to connect an arrow to vote for the candidate of their choice. "It's just going to be a mess again."

From the butterfly ballot to the broken arrow, Supervisor of Elections Theresa LePore is setting up the county for another election meltdown potentially, said the Delray Beach retiree, who was communications director for Children's Hospital in Miami and a communications specialist for the Palm Beach County School District.

Kemp and others wonder why LePore had to complicate matters by using the broken arrow when voters could be asked simply to fill in a circle to indicate their vote, known as bubbling in.

"People have to bubble in a lot of things today, but I've never seen where you have to connect an arrow," he said.

The second section of the article points out this:

Absentee ballot demand up

Fueled by Democrats who say voters shouldn't trust touch-screen machines and Republicans who have long pushed absentee ballots as a way to increase voter turnout, elections supervisors say requests for absentee ballots are shattering old records.

With a week to go before Friday's deadline to request mail-in ballots, Palm Beach County had received a whopping 30,752 requests — nearly three times the 11,472 requested before the 2000 primary.

People are rightly afraid that their votes aren't going to be counted. Evidence is that Ms. LaPore is afraid that they will.

Comments

[sarah-ovenall.livejournal.com]

Durham County uses broken arrow ballots. There's a big arrow with a gap in the line, pointing to each candidate's name. They give you a felt-tip pen and you fill in the gap for the candidate you want. I haven't heard complaints of it being confusing here, although I have wondered why they don't just use the hollow oval. We got the arrow ballots after the voting machine breakdown fiasco in the early 90s.

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

We use the arrow, too. Our county and maybe our state always gets top marks for fair, honest, and reliable voting procedures. lsanderson might have more to say. He is an election judge hereabouts with many years experience, with the job of travelling between precincts and overseeing things.

Just because one hasn't seen something doesn't mean it's a bad idea. Sheesh, Mr. Delray Beach retiree, communications specialist or no.

K.

[cheshyre]

If you want to see images of the ballots, I found some and posted them to riba_rambles:

Currently http://www.livejournal.com/users/riba_rambles/341492.html,

Permanently http://www.osmond-riba.org/lis/journal/2004_08_22_j_archive.htm#109327079742468631

[montoya.livejournal.com]

This seems like molehill stuff to me. The broken arrow is a very common ballot design, and I believe it's generally considered to be a good one. I've used it myself and never found it the least confusing. The advantage over bubbles is that it's very very clear which name you're filling in for, because the arrow points right to it.

[sturgeonslawyer.livejournal.com]

This is part of something rather bigger and more sinister (http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F20F14F7395B0C758DDDA10894DC404482). I blog'd this about a week ago - damn, now it's gone to "purchase" mode. Need to start copying significant bits into the blog when doing articles from places like NYT. Um, lessee ... try this (http://www.iht.com/articles/534364.html), from the International Herald-Tribune.

Some snippets:

This year, Florida again drew up a felon list, and tried to keep it secret. When a judge forced the list's release, it turned out that it had once again wrongly disenfranchised many people - again, largely african-american - while including almost no Hispanics.

State police officers have gone into the homes of elderly African-American voters -including partricipants in get-out-the-vote operations - and interrogated them as part of what the state says is a fraud investigation. But the state hs provided little information about the investigation, and ... this looks remarkably like an attempt to intimidate voters.

Recently the Florida Republican Party sent out a brochure urging supporters to use absentee ballots to make sure their votes are counted. The party claims that was a mistake - but it was, in fact, good advice.

This is very very ugly and it will only get uglier.

[firecat]

I've used both "broken arrows" and the "punch-out cards" to vote, and I vastly prefer the arrows.

With the punch-out cards, the dangly bits of card left over really were a problem.

I think the arrows are easier to use than bubbles, because with bubbles there's always a question whether you filled in the bubble completely enough.