Today the Brennan Center for Justice at the law school at NYU released a major report about the impact of poor ballot designs and unclear instructions on voters and the importance of usability testing.
Among the highlights is an overview of the Usability Professionals’ Association (UPA) usability testing kit for local election officials (the LEO Usability Testing Kit). Members of the UPA Usability in Civic Life Project are working with Brennan Center to provide direct training for election officials.
The report is titled Better Ballots, and can be found on the Brennan Center site:
http://www.brennancenter.org/
http://www.brennancenter.org/content/resource/better_ballots/
The report released today, and 3 articles in USA Today and the New York Times highlight it.
Study: Poor ballot designs still affect U.S. elections
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-07-20-ballots_N.htm
Ballot designs are ‘literacy test for voters’
http://www.usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-07-20-ballot-inside_N.htm
Influx of Voters Expected to Test New Technology
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/21/us/21voting.html