What Older Adults Can Teach Us About Designing Better Ballots

Heuristic-Driven Recommendations for Improving U.S. Voting

Human factors/ergonomics (HF/E) can play a role in improving equal opportunity in U.S. voting through the redesign of inefficient voting processes that lead to low voter turnout. This article, which derives from the authors’ winning entry in the HFES 2014 “Voting Systems of Tomorrow” competition, outlines HF/E-driven recommendations for improving the American voting process. These recommendations include a “one-stop shop” for all voting-related information, personalized voter accounts, appointment systems, and several ballot design suggestions. Implementation of these recommendations, on any level, has the potential to improve the proficiency of polling places, lower all-too-common lengthy wait times, and ensure that ballots are accessible to all voters.

Toward more usable electronic voting: testing the usability of a smartphone voting system

OBJECTIVE

The goal of this research was to assess the usability of a voting system designed for smart-phones.

BACKGROUND

Smartphones offer remote participation in elections through the use of pervasive technology. Voting on these devices could, among other benefits, increase voter participation while allowing voters to use familiar technology. However, the usability of these systems has not been assessed.

METHOD

A mobile voting system optimized for use on a smartphone was designed and tested against traditional voting platforms for usability.

RESULTS

There were no reliable differences between the smartphone-based system and other voting methods in efficiency and perceived usability. More important, though, smartphone owners committed fewer errors on the mobile voting system than on the traditional voting systems.

CONCLUSION

Even with the known limitations of small mobile platforms in both displays and controls, a carefully designed system can provide a usable voting method. Much of the concern about mobile voting is in the area of security; therefore, although these results are promising, security concerns and usability issues arising from mitigating them must be strongly considered.

APPLICATION

The results of this experiment may help to inform current and future election and public policy officials about the benefits of allowing voters to vote with familiar hardware.