How do Gore supporters assert that the butterfly ballots having the hole punched out for Buchannan SHOULD have been punched for Gore instead? As I look at the ballot, Buchannan’s hole “position” is BETWEEN Bush’s and Gore’s, so isn’t it just as assertable that a (confused) punch for Buchannan was an intended vote for Bush rather than Gore? No one seems to be considering this possibility.
The argument goes that if your candidate is on the very top (Bush), then you’re going to punch the very top hole (also Bush’s).
Its not a matter of proximity, its a matter of order. People say they got confused when they saw Gore’s name 2nd and thus punched the second hole, which was actually Buchanan’s hole.
Clear?
Clearish?
In addition, the photos that I’ve seen of the ballot in question are all top-down photos. What you don’t realize from this perspective is that the punchcard is below the printed arrows. When I voted a few years ago using the punchcard system, the card was on the order of 3/8" or so below the arrows. Additionally, the card was horizontal in a pretty high voting booth.
Why is this important? If I stood up in a normal position, the resulting parallax made the arrows line up more closely with the holes above the correct ones. I wound up having to lean way into the booth to get a top-down look, something that a shorter, or stiff-jointed person, would have trouble doing.
Although I’m not sure, I’m assuming that the Florida punch-card system is substantially similar to what I used. If this is the case, then the resulting parallax would tend to cause Gore voters to accidentally punch the Buchanan hole (and Buchanan voters to punch the Bush hole), rather than having Bush voters punch the Buchanan hole.
“Why” may be more important than “How.” Gore is losing. In 1996 when 15,000 ballots were thrown out but their guy was winning, they didn’t complain. BTW, I’m sure it would be Bush whining if it were the other way around. I’m not picking on Gore or his voters.
I can tell you with absolute certainty that at least one vote for Buchanan was an intended vote for Gore.
The butterfly ballot was an excellent example of a horrible user interface. The human eye is used to reading two columns of information from top to bottom, first the left column then the right. Think of the menu behind the counter at a fast food restaurant…do you read across or up and down and then across?
This ballot subverts that convention, by forcing the user to scan the ballot from left to right on one side, right to left on the opposite side. Ergo, a hurried Democratic voter reading the left hand column first and seeing Gore/Lieberman listed second in the left column may have very easily punched the second hole without even noticing that the column to the left was even there, even with the arrow pointing to the third hole. It is not necessarily a matter of being “too stupid” to comprehend the layout.
As a software developer if I walked into a review with a GUI window set up like the Palm Beach butterfly ballot I’d get laughed out of the meeting room.
They use the butterfly ballot of lot of places - like in Illinois - with no major complaints. I am just amazed at the number of (to me) wierd ways to vote. I grew up with the mechanical levers - no punch cards or ballots or anything else. This is one case where the old technology rules.
There is something else that needs to be pointed out here. Most states have statutes on how the ballot is to be ordered. That order is usually in the order of the results from the governor’s election, or the previous presidential election, or whatever.
The bottom line is that the big two, Republican and Democrat, almost always line up one-two on the ballot. It is an implicit thing. With someone like my mom, who won’t read or listen to directions, habit prevails. For a pragmatic social worker who has voted 20-40 times in her life (and who by her action has won “senior” status from her son), there is no third slot.
I recommend that folks search the Great Debates before addressing the legality of the PBC ballot here. Suffice to say that the candidates were numbered correctly, in accordance with the Florida statutes. There is enough leeway in the statutes to warrant a debate about the ordering of the candidates on the actual ballot–those debates are already ongoing in GD. I guarantee that a judge will be looking over this one, and this is not the forum to provide an early answer.
http://ja.mlive.com/news/index.ssf?/news/stories/20001114jbutter429.frm
Apparently, these first graders had no difficulty in figuring out which candidate to vote for :))
I would say something here, but hell…it’s much too easy!
i agree that the ballot is suffciently confusing that some bush voters (especially elderly ones with less than perfect vision) probably did punch the wrong hole and accidentally voted for buchanan.