Stephen Black wrote:
>
> On Thu, 9 Nov 2000, Rick Froman wrote:
>
> > You don't have to suspect. Check it out for yourself at:
> >
> > http://www.sun-sentinel.com/elections/palmbeachballot.htm
>
> Very revealing, Rick. Thank you.
>
> 'Tis true. You would definitely not be the sharpest knife in the
> drawer to ignore those arrows and vote for the wrong person.
>
If you have ever seen one of these ballots it is not so simple. They
are slid into a slot and gets "locked" in place by hooking the holes in
the ballot card over two little plastic knobs (okay, not the best
description but close enough!). Unfortunately, there is some give so it
can shift a bit up or down. Thus, the arrows don't always line up
directly with the hole to punch but sometimes hit the line above or
below. Usually, the candidates are spaced fairly far apart and only on
one side of the page so that there is not question as to which candidate
one is voting for.
On our ballots, the candidates for office including our new dead senator
were only on one side of the page. Some of the resolutions concerning
our sewer district resembled the two sided Florida ballot. It was very
confusing indeed to know what you you were punching. I had to pull out
the ballot several times to double-check that I had punched the right
hole for a resolution. If you accidentally discovered upon double
checking (which I doubt that most individuals do) that you punched the
wrong hole, you would have to go and have the ballot invalidated and get
a new ballot (it is actually a fairly complicated process). If you have
folks who have been waiting in line for a couple of hours to vote, there
is a good deal of social pressure to just "let it slide".
Finally, I would mention that a fair number of voters in the Florida
vote are senior citizens and elderly. Thus, they may be contending with
the visual difficulties that are correlated with old age. For them, the
ballot would have been a perceptual nightmare.
Hope everyone is having a great semester!
Linda
--
Linda M. Woolf, Ph.D.
Associate Professor - Psychology
http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
