Over the three years that we’ve been using optical scan voting, there have been a number of comments about the design of the ballot.  We’ve responded to a number of the excellent suggestions.  In an effort to assist election officials in this regard, the Brennan Center has completed a study called Better Ballots. It’s a great study and I anticipate that at least one of their suggestions will be incorporated this year in Champaign County on top of a number that are already part of our ballots.

They recommend shading all the instructional portions above the candidates’ names.  Right now we’ve been shading just that area that describes the jurisdiction that the candidates are running within.  Look at page 43 of the guide to see examples of what I’m talking about.

We’ve improved the wording informing people that they need to vote the back of the ballot and we are getting fewer complaints regarding that.  Our judges have also done a better job of informing voters about that.

We also don’t use the “complete the arrow” voting that is something of a relic and which I always figured would cause confusion when I saw it demonstrated.

State law has now changed and required election authorities to put the language “vote for not more than”.  We had already incorporated that change on our ballots (using the words “up to”) because we had so many people confused about whether they could vote for less than the number to be elected (you can).

A new change for this year on our ballots will be to spell out the number in the term of office and put the numeral for the number to be elected.  We have found that some people see the term of office and think that is the number to be elected.  Hopefully, by having a single numeral in the directions, that will be the focus of the voter’s attention and errors will be eliminated.

An upcoming challenge in 2010 will be trying to explain to voters the new law that will require them to vote for a candidate for statewide constitutional officers.  I’m glad we don’t have to deal with that this time.