Interfaces and ... voting

On Tuesday, I voted in our primary election. It was the first time that we used the "new" computerized machines to cast our votes. The interface was fairly simple, which it needs to be when you have thousands of people trying to spend a short amount of time to do the appropriate tasks. However, the system could use some improvements. For example, there was no candidate for one of the positions ("dog catcher" isn't exactly what it was, but some relatively unimportant job). So, of course, unless you had a "write-in" candidate for that particular spot, you had no selections to make in that section of the ballot. Unfortunately, then, when you tried to actually cast your votes, it complained that you hadn't answered all the questions. It should be really easy to make the system ignore those sections when it takes your final answer.

 Overall, it was an okay experience. I watched several older people (not watched the specific choices, but just observed whether they had problems) and they seemed to find it easy to use also. I wonder how much longer it will be until you can simply cast your vote entirely by Internet rather than going to a physical location? I know that the technology exists. I also know that a lot of people are concerned about a lack of security if using a completely Internet-based voting solution. However, given some of the issues with more traditional approaches to voting, it might actually be a better choice.

Back to my vacation.....
 

Posted at 10:08AM May 18, 2007 by jcinfoblog in General  |  Comments[0]