One more post on voting, but this tome about UX design. The new optical scanners have an awful user experience. Two things really stuck out. First, it was entirely unclear whether to insert one’s ballot face up or face down (or either). There should be a huge sample right on the feeding slot to show the proper orientation. Second, for the machine to just say “Ballot Processed” is really disconcerting. It requires too high a level of trust that the machine did in fact properly scan and was correctly loaded with information about the ballot. It doesn’t seem asking too much to have a screen that shows the candidates the scanner thinks you voted for and then have a “approve” and a “cancel” button. At least for me that would substantially improve my comfort level that my vote was properly counted. Even better would be to have the machine after the confirmation print a unique key that I could use later to look up my vote over the web.
