ELECTION DAY

Current design

Suggested new design

It seems that the New York Board of Elections has not taken my—and The New York Times'—advice and has implemented their visually disabled ballot for the state's foray into electronic voting (in September's primary and today's election). It is so poorly designed that The New York Times implored readers to design a better ballot.

One glaring problem of the current ballot design is inclusion of the A, B, C, D, E party headings within the vertical space belonging to item 1. The headings are for the entire ballot, not just item 1. The list of problems goes on and on... too much bold type; paper orientation toward the parties not the actual office being voted on; unnecessary space devoted to language translation (how does a person's name translate from English to Spanish?); line strokes that are too heavy; etc., etc.

Let's hope this confusing design does not translate into voter confusion.