Re: Ballot Design Hogwash

Subject: Re: Ballot Design Hogwash
From: "Dawson McKnight" <dawson_mcknight -at- hotmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com>
Date: Fri, 10 Nov 2000 11:00:55 EST

Dan,

Your arguments are right on target for the most part, but I want to add to and contend with parts of your final argument:

Presumably, this is done by people who make a
mistake, and think they can rectify it by punching
another hole for the candidate they intended to vote
for.

Another theory about the double-punching is that people thought that they
had to punch next to both Gore's name and Lieberman's name, or next to some other presidential candidate's name and that of his or her VP. Either way, these ballots have been thrown out, and there is no way to determine who cast them (voting is, after all, anonymous), which candidate they really meant to select (perhaps some of them meant to select Buchanan), and whether all 19,000 people *really* punched the Gore and Buchanan holes. For all we know, half of the 19,000 may have punched the Bush and Socialist party holes, or some such.

I'd argue that anyone simple-minded enough to
think this is the right way to do it is not qualified to
vote.

Not qualified? Every citizen (with a few legal exceptions) is qualified to vote regardless of his or her intelligence or timidity (in the case of those who didn't ask for help when they needed it). Voting, unlike technical writing, isn't an activity reserved for the elite.

Dawson
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