{"id":1761,"date":"2008-06-06T20:52:50","date_gmt":"2008-06-06T20:52:50","guid":{"rendered":"0"},"modified":"2008-06-06T20:59:24","modified_gmt":"2008-06-06T20:59:24","slug":"because_im_trav","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/?p=1761","title":{"rendered":"Bad Paper Voting Systems"},"content":{"rendered":"

Because I’m traveling so much, I voted absentee for the first time ever last Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Here’s a letter about it that I sent to the LA Times, the LA County Registrar-Recorder<\/a>, my County Supervisor<\/a>, and Sec. Bowen<\/a>:<\/p>\n

For the first time, I voted absentee in this election.<\/p>\n

\nI was shocked to discover that what I had was a computer card, covered with over 100 numbered bubbles in somewhat erratic columns, and a brochure that listed the candidates and measures, and told me which numbered bubble to fill in. As someone who spends a fair amount of time reviewing the usability of systems by people, I’ve got to say that this is one of the worst that I have ever seen.<\/p>\n

\nThe potential for error by able, alert voters is overwhelming; I cannot imagine how difficult and error-prone these must be for elderly or disabled voters. If the ‘butterfly ballot’ scandal in the 2000 Florida election was based on ballots that were difficult to comprehend – what upcoming electoral scandals and lawsuits will this County face because ours are incomprehensible? Why can’t we deliver a simple, easy to understand and validate absentee ballot to our voters?<\/p>\n

\nI’ve made inquiries, and NO OTHER county has absentee ballots like these; in every case the ballot itself is human-readable with a candidate’s or measure’s name next to the bubble to be filled out.<\/p>\n

\nLos Angeles needs ballots like these before the November election. Period.<\/p>\n

\nMarc Danziger<\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Here’s the reason why (my neighbor’s unused ballot, not mine…)<\/p>\n

\"absentee.JPG\"<\/p>\n

…and because someone is going to claim it’s my ballot…<\/p>\n

\"ballot_stub.JPG\"<\/p>\n

Brad Friedman<\/a>, over to you – go gettum…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bad voting systems don’t have to be computer-based…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1761"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1761\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1761"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1761"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/marcdanziger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1761"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}