Title: Disenfranchised by Bad Design
Context: It’s not just a bad idea to have confusing, poorly designed ballots for elections, in many cases, it’s also the law. Seriously.
Synopsis: Voting can be stressful. Not because the choice of candidates can be perceived as life or death in certain elections. Not because the weight of hundreds of years of democracy figuratively rests on you, the voter’s shoulders. Not even because you have to figure out how to get away from work for a few hours on a Tuesday (A FREAKING TUESDAY!) in order to cast your vote. No, voting can be stressful often because one needs to hold a PhD in informatics to be able to understand the mind-bogglingly designed ballot itself. Who designs these things? Very often the same idiots you voted against in the last election because their ideas on public policy were so bad you wanted to puke yet somehow a plurality of the general public was so misinformed that they ascended to office regardless. If they can’t balance a budget, formulate comprehensive health policy, or even figure out how to keep the potholes on your street filled with any degree of competence, how can we possibly expect them to come up with a ballot that doesn’t look like it was designed by an orangutan with ADD? The answer: we can’t. So good luck trying to figure out how your ballot works. Look at it this way, at least you have a 50/50 chance of voting for the person you really want even if you screw up as bad as elected officials normally do.
Best Bit: “When we design things in a way that doesn’t work for all voters, we degrade the quality of democracy.”
via propublica.org
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