There's been some recent discussion of which ballots are easiest to use.
Does anyone know of published (experimental) studies of usability of
non-plurality ballots (perhaps vs. plurality ballots)?
I'd be happy to take personal responses and summarize for anyone who would
rather not post to the list.
Thanks,
Steve
P.S. From what I've looked at so far: A good starting point into the
literature on usability for plurality ballots is Sarah Everett's thesis:
The Usability of Electronic Voting Machines and How Votes Can Be Changed
Without Detection. That references Herrnson et al's book "Voting
Technology: The Not-So-Simple Act..", also a substantial work in the area.
Both discuss usability of a few non-standard ballot features (e.g., review
screens/VVPAT), and at least the latter discusses "select 2" contests.
However, neither addresses ranked/rated/approval ballots. In the US, NIST
has developed usability standards for voting (specifically for non-ranked
contests). Here's NIST's voting homepage http://www.nist.gov/itl/vote/,
but I haven't found the navigation path to the specific usability
benchmark document yet; so, see:
http://vote.nist.gov/meeting-08172007/Usability-Benchmarks-081707.pdf
---------------------
Steven Wolfman, Ph.D.
Sr Instructor, UBC CS
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