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Repeat of Florida Butterfly Ballot
More Trouble writes "The Michigan Absentee Ballot seems to be very 'confusing', a la the infamous Palm Beach, Florida Butterfly Ballot. Help!"
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Seriously, someone actually looked at this and decided it was okay?
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Numerous reports state that the company that sent out the ballot already mailed corrections. Also, it appears to be limited in scope.
Man, that's messed up. That's way worse than the Florida ballot. It's really truly incorrect. At least with half a brain you could figure out the Florida ballot.
Luckily it seems that properly printed ballots have been sent out to replace these incorrect ones...
You can see the whole ballot at The Daily Kos.
Don't blame me, I voted for
------------------- <==
Unknown host pong.
Did the DEMS design it? After all they did design the florida one.
... get to repeat it in summer school
Ralph Nader is on there!
How did that happen?
* Winners compare their achievements to their goals, losers compare theirs to that of others.
If you read through the comments, you'll see info detailing that it has been fixed.
And no, this isn't the same as the 'butterfly ballot' or 'hanging chad' problems. Those were due to the stupidity of the user and a general inability to read and follow fairly simple directions. This is a typographical error.
Still, I bet people will manage to screw up the connecting of an arrow.
Worse than the design, is the fact that you don't get to see the names of the electors you're actually voting for. I mean, their vote may be pretty much a foregone conclusion, but I'd like to know who I'm picking just in case.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
...please, no consipracy theories. It was a misprint, and it's been fixed. Plus, Bush is the one that didn't have a mark next to his name.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Looking back at the Florida butterfly ballot, you can't vote for a write-in candidate (no punch hole). Gary Coleman would be disappointed.
I agree totally. Ever since the first time I saw a ballot with that I thought only idiots would use it. If you look at the candidates and your choice in each race is the same party, that's okay. Just blindly voting for candidates without even knowing who they are hurts democracy.
In the SE, I think it is used mostly by Yellow-Dog Democrats. (They would vote for the Democrat even if it was a yellow dog.) There are a lot of these in Alabama. It's leftover from reconstruction. (Them Republican carpet-baggers!)
My wife has a degree in broadcast communications from a college in Tennessee. As part of one of her classes, she helped the local newspaper conduct a poll. The topic was metro schools (city & county school systems combined), a very non-partisan issue. She had one respondent say, "Whichever is Democrat." She tried to explain that there was not a "Democrat" choice, but the lady insisted, "Whichever is Democrat."
Anyone notice that this ballot has the misspelled phrase "No Party Afiliation" under Nader? Official ballot, and they can't even spell right? ;)
Gotta love a party whose campaign platform is largely unconstitutional.
osted on Wed, Sep. 01, 2004
... people just lost confidence in the voting process."
Click here to find out more!
Designer of infamous butterfly ballot loses re-election bid
HILARY ROXE
Associated Press
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. - Palm Beach County Elections Supervisor Theresa LePore, the inventor of the butterfly ballot that became a national joke during the 2000 presidential recount, lost her re-election bid.
With all precincts reporting, challenger Arthur Anderson had 91,134 votes, or 52 percent, while LePore had 85,601 votes, or 48 percent.
Despite the loss, LePore will remain in office until Jan. 3 and will oversee the November election in the county.
LePore spokesman Marty Rogol said a "media blitz" by Anderson supporters over the last week, including appearances by some out-of-state Democratic heavyweights, was partly responsible for her showing.
LePore refused to meet with reporters early Wednesday, but as the polls closed Tuesday she said she was too busy overseeing the counting of ballots to think about her own race.
"I just want to win so I can continue doing the job I love," LePore said.
Anderson said voters remembered the criticism LePore, and by extension their county, received four years ago.
"The public had lost trust in the operation and management of this particular office," Anderson said. "There were too many glitches
LePore, 49, has worked in the elections office for more than three decades, and in the top job since 1996. A Democrat when she ran unopposed in the 2000 election, she was angered by statements party leaders made during the recount and had since declared herself independent.
She became the focus of national attention and the subject of death threats in 2000 after some Palm Beach County voters said a confusing butterfly ballot, which listed the names of presidential candidates on opposing pages, led them to mistakenly select conservative third-party candidate Pat Buchanan instead of Democrat Al Gore. The design provided fodder for political cartoonists and late-night comedians. Gore lost the election in Florida to President Bush by 537 votes.
Still reeling from that narrow defeat, Democrats rallied behind Anderson, a professor and former county school board member. Florida U.S. Rep. Robert Wexler, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean and Gore's running mate, U.S. Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, all stumped for Anderson.
Despite all the trouble in 2000, LePore's supporters pointed during the campaign to more recent history. In 2002, LePore ran a smooth election on new touchscreen voting machines while her counterparts in Broward and Miami-Dade counties again made Florida the punchline of national jokes because of voting problems in the gubernatorial election.
Miami-Dade elections chief David Leahy resigned after being heavily criticized for weeklong delays in tallying the votes and opening precincts hours late. In Broward, Gov. Jeb Bush suspended election chief Miriam Oliphant for incompetence, including opening polls late, never counting absentee ballots and failing to maintain accurate voting rolls. She lost badly Tuesday in an attempt to reclaim her position.
Anderson, 63, has no experience overseeing elections and was criticized during the campaign for failing to pay federal taxes for years. He said the tax problems are being resolved and that his past management positions qualify him for the supervisor's job.
Speaking of a "continuous erosion" in citizens' confidence in the voting process, he said he ran against LePore to protect "the right to have our votes count."
Anderson's chief campaign issue was also Wexler's focus - adding printers to the county's voting machines to ensure a paper trail exists in case of a recount. Wexler has sued LePore and others to add the printers. LePore, who doesn't oppose the printers but thinks they are unnecessary, needed state approval to add the paper trail.
[n/t]
Ceci n'est pas un post
That is the ballot I received on September 29th. My congressman said less than 70 affected ballots were mailed out, and the company was printing new ones to be mailed out within a week. http://www.umich.edu/~mlafler It may be a small problem, but I feel people should be aware of it, and please make sure to check your ballot carefully when you vote this November.
...that this is mearly a misprint from the printing company? raise your hand if you have hand misprinted business cards or inivitations. oh, quite a few out there.
always mosh clockwise
do we really want people too fucking stupid to understand an arrow to be voting in the first place? if there were a way to design an intelligence test that would be unbiased along social and racial lines i would support requiring a test to register to vote, now i wouldn't expect a particularly high intelligence, but at the very least some glimmer of cognitive activity.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
At that point I'd just take a highlighter and let them figure out who I "intended" to give my vote to.