On ballots, black boxes and blue tape
When I was 7, my mama took me into the voting booth for the first time. My class was following the Bush-Dukakis race through the Weekly Reader, the premiere elementary school news source of the ’80s. Our class held a mock election, and I got really into it. My mom, ever the American history teacher, seized the opportunity to show me firsthand how democracy worked. My grandparents volunteered at our polling place, and I remember the whole event as a family affair — as something we do with our neighbors and friends and families, even when we don’t agree on what the outcomes should be. I struck me as a remarkable, hopeful, grown-up and important thing to do, to be a good neighbor, to respect each other, and to register our intent for the community and the nation. I couldn’t wait to get my own ballot.
Today I still see voting as a community activity and a family affair. I usually go to the polls with my partner, and on Election Day whenever possible. While I have voted absentee or early in the past, I prefer to walk into my polling place, which is now Peace Iglesia Metodista Unida, and see my neighbors on Election Day. I like to thank the pollworkers and get my I voted sticker. And after all the issues in South Florida elections over the past 14 years, I like to see how it’s going for everyone.
To prep for Election Day, I always print a sample ballot to use as a guide in the voting booth. I spend several hours over a week or so researching candidates’ records, positions and endorsements before I mark that ballot with my choices to take with me. This process is easy for high-profile candidates in interesting races, and absolutely maddening for local judges and lower-profile officials. Despite reading a ton of news coverage, I often ask local insiders about certain county races (I live in unincorporated Miami-Dade County.) and lawyer friends about judges, since it’s hard to understand their records or positions on scant news coverage or without context. I realize most people don’t have the time or inclination to do this much backgrounding, but as a former municipal reporter, I have a keen awareness of how much these races actually affect my neighborhood and daily life. One unusual quirk of this year’s election cycle, was that I was actually far more interested in our county commission race, which was decided during the primary election, than most of the races in the general election. It made me realize how confusing having races or initiatives on the primary ballot must be to new or less-engaged voters. It’s pretty easy to observe smart political moves that exploit this quirk, but I think it’s probably a disservice to voters and I think it would be more reasonable to align our federal, state and local election cycles as much as possible.
In the general election, I was in and out of the church, which was clearly marked as a polling place, in about 20 minutes, which was a relief, considering we waited over an hour to vote in the 2012 general election. I actually walked past another polling place on my way to my polling place. Districting is a weird business. When I arrived, I showed my driver’s license and signed for my ballot before going to pick up my ballot at my precinct’s table. The poll worker told me to bubble in my selections and handed me a ballot in a giant folder, but she was out of pens. So, I waited a couple of minutes for a pen before heading over to cast my vote. The reason I always bring a marked sample ballot is because our ballot layout is freaking weird. It’s three columns read top-to-bottom, left-to-right, front-to-back, on a giant paper. The language breaks in odd places, especially on long ballot measures, though the selections are always grouped together. It would be hard for me to read the ballot initiatives for the first time in this format, and they’re tough to read anyway because the writing is generally confusing as hell to non-lawyers. I would love a citizen-written and approved “plain English” version of every ballot initiative included on the ballot.
After I marked my ballot, I proceeded to the scanners. Multiple optical scan machines lined the wall of my polling place, one for each precinct, but the poll worker only allowed us to cast one vote at a time, which caused a bottleneck. I started to queue up a few feet behind the man at the machine for my precinct and the poll worker yelled at us: “Hey, stand behind the tape!” I thought she meant that I had crossed some sort of tape barrier system, like at a movie theater or bank or TSA, so I kept scanning the room for it. Then I spotted the tape — an 8-inch piece of blue painter’s tape on the floor, curling at one edge. There were no other signs or markings, just this sad piece of tape that apparently was an impenetrable privacy shield for the voter casting her ballot. I said, “Oooooh. Y’all may want to have somebody stand there if that’s where you want us to line up,” then shuffled behind the painter’s tape force-field to wait my turn, cluing in a couple of other confused voters on my way.
It was finally my turn to cast my ballot. In our precinct, you essentially submit your ballot into a black box. The feedback you get as you scan your ballot is message that the machine scanned your ballot and a paper receipt at the end that says your vote was counted. An older gentleman ahead of me griped to the poll worker that the machines were terrible because there’s no way for us to check if the machine got our vote right. I nodded. There’s no assurance that your intended result was recorded, just that something was recorded inside the box. In an age where we can pay for stuff by waving our phones around and get near-instant confirmation email receipts when we buy a pack of gum, this lack of feedback seems especially egregious. The poll worker looked puzzled, but apologized and said there was nothing she could do. After the scanner slurped up my ballot, I got that mysterious receipt that confirmed I put something in the machine for my precinct along with my sticker — which I wore proudly all day.
That precious sticker comes at a cost. I am an educated, privileged person, and I put a fair amount of effort into voting. As someone who really enjoys voting, who finds it a generally awesome thing to do, it bothers me that there are so many roadblocks in the process, even for someone as privileged as I am. I don’t have to ask for ballots in another language. My work is supportive of me being a little late on Election Day if necessary. I don’t have to worry about dropping kids off or picking them up. Add in a few more layers of complexity, and I understand why voting might not be worth the effort for a lot of people. We have created great technology specifically designed to reduce friction in everyday transactions. It seems wrong that one of the most important transactions we can make is such a pain in the ass. It’s time we have a serious, larger discussion about how to fix this experience. We need designers and technologists and government and most of all voters to make this thing better. So, chime in. Let’s get started.
