<nettime> Fwd: Analysis of FL ballots

[Richard Pell <rp3h+@andrew.cmu.edu>]

---------- Forwarded message begins here ----------
Date: Wed, 08 Nov 2000 17:40:01 -0500
From: kiesler <kiesler@cs.cmu.edu>
To: hcii-faculty@ux2.sp.cs.cmu.edu
Subject: Important re. the election

Folks
In Palm Beach, somebody at the elections office designed an
unbelievably badly designed ballot. Click on link below and "the ballot in
question" on the right hand side of the  page to see what the actual ballot
looked like.

http://cnews.tribune.com/news/story/0,1162,oso-nation-82371,00.html

One of our faculty, Bonnie John, used it as an example of poor usability in
the Introduction to HCI class today. The design has drastic effects; Gore
is second on the ballot but the second button actually causes a vote for
Buchanan instead of Gore.

One of the SDS political science faculty, Greg Adams, did an analysis to
see what the effect of this ballot design was on the election. I am copying
his email message below.

From: "Greg Adams" <gadams@andrew.cmu.edu>
<snip>
Subject: important: election results
Date: Wed, 8 Nov 2000 15:57:54 -0500
   <snip>

As you probably all know, Bush has 1700 more votes in Florida over Gore.
However, folks in Palm Beach were complaining that their ballots were
confusing, and many people voted for Buchanan when they thought they were
voting for Gore. With the help of my wife Chris, I analyzed the county by
county presidential results for Florida. The results are clear: the ballot
for Palm Beach cost Gore approximately 2200 votes. A simple regression of
Buchanan's vote on Bush's vote shows that Buchanan should have only gotten
800 votes, not 3400.
Don't believe me? Look for yourself: It's not even close! Palm Beach is
an outlier beyond all belief!!!

http://madison.hss.cmu.edu/palm-beach.pdf

I need help getting these results out to the world. If you have media
contacts or now how to tip them, please have them contact me asap. Thanks.

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