Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/11/14/sunshine-state.html
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I don’t understand the mistake.
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From the article:
The race for Senate is hidden in plain sight at bottom left, just under the instructions in English, the instructions in Spanish, and the instructions in Creole. Those of you who don’t read Creole very fluently might stop reading at that point, and skip to the top of the middle column. In that case, you’d be in danger of undervoting in the Senate race.
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Democrats might call it a bug. Republicans prefer to call it a feature.
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I looked at that ballot. Anybody who has a problem with it either can’t read, is too impatient to read, or is too dumb to be allowed to vote.
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I for one find it fascinating that the Florida ballots have Creole on them.
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You looked at it looking for a mistake.
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Did anyone write in Florida Man? Asking for a friend…
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I saw crayon on them.
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I am a little confused as to how a “noncompliant” ballot was put out for use anyway. I could buy incompetence, but to be consistently incompetent in such a way that the party in power is consistently benefitted is straining my credulity. Even if we are talking Florida level ncompetence. Or, as Randy Moss says, “C’mon, man!!”
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Possibly. And i don’t want to be dismissive of 26,000 people, after all looking at the ballot IT IS confusing to look at but i had a similar experience voting in Texas on a voting machine and because of that i spent extra time carefully looking and reviewing my choices to make sure i did not make a mistake. But like i said, seeing how this Florida ballot looks i can’t exactly fault them for not seeing the Senate race… the way voting (and registration) is done in general needs a ton more work but i’m sure that’s by design by the powers that be.
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Ahhhh, it took me about 10 minutes, but I finally figured out HOW this ballot was supposed to hinder the Democratic party as reported!
This ballot is only for a district which is overwhelmingly Democratic (which is why there isn’t even a Republican nomination on the bottom left item.)
Thus, if the location of the senate race voting really is skipped over by a large amount of people it’s going to be mostly Democratic votes which are missing.
I feel this could have been explained better both in the original article and the Boing Boing post rather than just alluding to it.
ETA: I’m taking the claims with a grain of salt, but I’m not well informed on the subject of Florida voting and if there really is a history of Democratic votes being the ones screwed over in bad design, then I can see how it could be intentional.
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This is why a federally mandated standard ballot for use in all states would be such a good idea.
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I’ve read about this ballot elsewhere, but yea, count me in for a grain of salt. If the ballot is noncompliant, that’s an issue to address, but it doesn’t look too confusing to me. Then again, I’m an educated anglo-American.
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Common sense is a super power
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Too much smoke. Florida is a failed state. Elections there should be supervised by an outside referee.
They are throwing feces at both parties. Must stop.
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That’s what they said about the infamous Butterfly Ballot in 2000, which isn’t THAT difficult to understand if you actually look at it closely.
The thing is, in a close election a ballot design that only confuses a small percentage of the voting population is still more than capable of changing the outcome.
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At first glance though there’s just too much information on the ballot, the formatting is also very same-y so overall it’s just lousy and suboptimal how everything is presented to a voter. Yeah i didn’t have a huge problem with this either but if it impacted 26,000 votes then its definitely an issue.
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bolded mine
It is my hope that you will re-phrase that statement. It seems a bit…erm…biased?
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No it’s not. It means I’m aware of my privilege. Not everybody is fluent in English.
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