Another Florida debacle

There were a number of races in our recent election that were quite close. As I write this, several House seats remain undecided. Democrats appear to have picked up about 36 seats, though it could be a couple more.

The most prominent close races have been in Georgia and Florida. In Georgia, the Secretary of State went on a spree of voter suppression, implementing a strict exact match signature policy (no, election officials are not handwriting analysts) and placing thousands of voter registrations on hold, a large proportion of them from African American citizens. Did I mention that this same Secretary of State was on the ballot himself and appears to have won the gubernatorial contest by a thin margin?

In Florida, we have also seen voter suppression efforts over the years, and efforts to stop them. Ironically, at a time when Republicans appear to have won some of the close statewide races, voters in the state also approved Amendment 4 which restores ballot access to most former felons who have served their time. Over a million Floridians may be impacted. But whatever Republicans do to Democrats, it pales to what Democrats do to themselves. And once again, they seem to have deprived themselves of a win in the senatorial race with a poorly designed ballot.

In Broward County, a heavily Democratic area, 3.7 percent fewer people voted in the race for Senate than for governor. This might not seem like a big deal, as people can and often do skip races in which they have no interest or dislike the candidates, but it is four times the statewide rate and the difference amounts to more than 26,000 votes, more than double the margin in the very close race.

Why the undervote? On the ballot, the Senate race appeared at the bottom, underneath a set of instructions. While most people found it, enough missed it to possibly sway the results.

This is reminiscent of the 2000 election in which in Palm Beach County used, and had used for some time, a butterfly ballot design which led to confusion. Thousands of people in that very Democratic area inadvertently voted for Pat Buchanan. Thousands more voted double, realizing too late that their vote for Bush or Gore was mismarked. But because Bush was at the top of the ballot, and it was a Democratic county, Gore was far more affected.

There were many other shenanigans in Florida in 2000, from felons wrongly being disenfranchised, to coordinated efforts to delegitimize the recount. But the poor ballot design provided the clearest evidence; in a race determined by a few hundred votes, it cost Gore thousands.

Republicans often dismiss these problems, claiming Democrats are just too stupid to read their ballots properly. The thing is, the vast majority did follow instructions, but in a close race, it doesn’t take much of an error from a poorly designed ballot to sway the results.

I can see how these mistakes happen. I design surveys as part of my work and they are somewhat similar to ballots. The software used is sometimes the same.

Early in my career at Porterville College, I designed a survey on interest in athletics. There were a number of questions, but one we thought was fairly simple was meant to get information on what sport students wanted the college to add, should resources permit. We asked students for just one choice.

But, in giving students that choice, I provided a list showing men’s and women’s sports in two columns, side by side. I thought the instructions were clear, just pick one, but about one out of every six students picked one from each column. I was left to clean up the mess.

You could blame the students for not following instructions, but the fault was mine. I designed a survey with a poor format. The lesson I learned, aside from not putting single choices in multiple columns, was to always pilot test any survey we plan to implement.

The lessons for those designing ballots is similar, but far more important because the stakes are higher. They must coordinate to implement best practices so that the will of the people is recognized.

Michael Carley is a resident of Porterville. He can be reached at mcarley@gmail.com.