by Jean B. Eggemeyer
October 16, 2008Good design is the essential element in fashion, furniture and car manufacturing. Distinctive and appealing design is, after all, what makes a Porsche a Porsche. But the importance of design in other products is often overlooked — until bad design does harm. Think of recent toy recalls due to small parts that had the potential to come loose or the damaging confusion some pharmaceutical packaging has created.
The public affairs arena is no exception. The 2000 Palm Beach County presidential ballot demonstrated the potential for havoc that bad design can wreak. More than 6,600 voters cast their votes in error due to the awkward way in which the “butterfly ballot” was laid out, dramatically altering the course — and possibly the outcome — of the national race. The candidates’ names were staggered across two facing pages, and it was not clear which hole punch in the middle of the pages coincided with which candidate.
That design disaster served as a call to action for the American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA) and its members, made up of more than 22,000 professional graphic designers across the nation.
The New York City-based organization had already initiated a program in 1998, called Design for Democracy, which aimed to tackle various problems in government-citizen interactions and communications. One example: using better design to improve the clarity of IRS forms.
“But that confusing 2000 ballot design led Design for Democracy to focus more specifically on the issue of election design,” explained Jessica Friedman Hewitt, managing director of the AIGA program.
Design for Democracy’s first projects related to election communications were with two jurisdictions, Cook County, Illinois, and the State of Oregon.
“We redesigned their ballots, voter registration cards, voter information materials and polling place signage,” said Hewitt. “In Cook County we even prototyped some different kinds of voting place structures and poll worker materials, since poll workers are such an important part of elections.”
In its work advising elections officials, Design for Democracy has discovered many common problems that occur, particularly on ballots, across the United States.
“The first thing we run into…is confusing instructions,” said Hewitt. “Ballots today use a lot of instructional language that is not written at the fourth-grade level as literacy experts have advised us.”
For example, the group proposes writing “Vote for 1” (using the numeral 1 for low-literacy voters) rather than the more confusing “Vote for not more than one” instruction.
Another common problem is text legibility; information that is too small, centered on the ballot or printed in all capital letters.
“Then there is this amorphous, overall ballot design that can really influence voting results,” added Hewitt.
As was learned in Florida in 2000, elections officials need to be careful that ovals, arrows or check boxes are aligned correctly with candidate names.
“There are a lot of ways in which design can clarify or make obtuse the ballot information,” she summed up.
Coaxing Improved Ballot Design
Design for Democracy’s successful efforts in Illinois and Oregon led to work with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), the federal agency that develops and promotes measurement, standards and technology. Together, the two organizations developed election design guidelines. Work with NIST in turn led to a partnership with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) in 2005 to develop more comprehensive election design best practices.“Our goal was to define voluntary national guidelines for ballot design, as well as for the design of polling place voter information materials such as poll worker name tags, ‘vote here’ signs and voting instructions that complement the ballots that we designed,” said Hewitt.
The result is Effective Designs for the Administration of Federal Elections.
Written for state and local elections officials, the guidelines were developed from extensive research with voters, literacy experts, election officials, poll workers and voting equipment providers, as well as analyses of national and local election legislation. Designs for the two leading ballot technologies, optical scanners and the fully electronic or touch screen machines, were addressed.
The guidelines and editable samples of ballots and other materials were distributed to 6,000 election officials across the country in January of this year.
The design guidelines, in many respects, are simple and intiuitive. Among the group’s recommendations: use lowercase letters rather than all capital letters, as they are easier to recognize; avoid centered type, which forces the eye to stop reading in order to find the start of the next line; use one font so voters’ eyes do not have to stop to adjust to another text style; and incorporate illustrations to demonstrate instructions for low-literacy users.
A top ten list of pared down recommendations from the full EAC report guidelines can be accessed on the AIGA’s website.
Incorporating good design to aid voters may seem like a straightforward task, but improving election materials has proved to be complicated.
“There are a lot of challenges with elections design,” said Hewitt. “There is local legislation that might say things like, ‘candidate names must be printed in all capital letters,’ and that contradicts our guidelines. We certainly don’t recommend that local elections officials break the law, so we recommend that they take our guidelines and adapt them to their local legislation.”
“They will also need to adapt for local content, of course, and also to whatever their equipment provider can support. We are a few steps away from elections officials seamlessly being able to modify the editable samples we provide with their local content.”
Advocating Better Design
But Design for Democracy is working toward that goal, counseling jurisdictions on how elections law might be modified to make elections communications clearer and more accurate.In 2001 AIGA worked with U.S. Senate and House staff members to place information design criteria in the landmark Help Americans Vote Act. The Act also authorized funding for the EAC-AIGA Design for Democracy guidelines development.
Another successful advocacy tool has been a book, Design for Democracy: Ballot and Election Design, which was jointly published by AIGA and the University of Chicago Press a year ago.
Authored by Marcia Lausen, a Design for Democracy advisor, former AIGA board member and AIGA Chicago chapter president, the book builds on the lessons of 2000 and argues that our nation needs comprehensive election design reform in the service of citizens. A copy was sent to each member of Congress, secretaries of state and state level elections directors early in 2008.
While geared primarily toward elections officials, the book also speaks to the general public, said Hewitt.
“We get positive feedback on it from citizens who appreciate having the opportunity to have this important subject matter distilled in the approachable way that Marcia presents it.”
Conquering Pushback
Design for Democracy’s efforts to improve elections design have met with some resistance from elections officials, Hewitt admitted. Opposition generally revolves around local legislative constraints and costs.“The cost issue comes up around two things: first, we recommend visual instructions, and second, we recommend sufficiently legible text size. The combination of those two things can lead to an increase in ballot length and increases in printing costs,” Hewitt said.
Design for Democracy believes the increased length is a worthwhile investment in election accuracy, however. And the group believes that, despite a given jurisdiction’s monetary, vendor-imposed or legislative constraints, it can help elections officials understand the value of good design and aid them in recognizing possible changes.
“We can almost always help them make improvements to the design that will benefit their voters,” Hewitt said.
In Michigan, state elections law does dictate some ballot design characteristics, and the Secretary of State is a major influencer of ballot set-up. Once counties have drafted their ballots, they are then sent to the Secretary of State’s Office, where state elections officials receive and approve them.
The group may face an uphill battle, but there is will among Michigan’s local elections officials to make design improvements that will have an impact on accuracy and voter understanding.
“What we should have learned after Florida is that we all should be doing business the same way,” said Nancy Banks, city clerk and elections director for Southfield. “I think consistency is something we all need to strive and work toward. Michigan’s voting systems and designs should be the same as Ohio’s, which should be the same as California’s.”
The impact of Design for Democracy’s efforts to date is difficult to gauge, said AIGA’s Hewitt, but she emphasized that they are “just getting started.”
“A lot of folks we’ve talked to have been resistant to engage in a change process prior to this high-profile, presidential year election,” she explained. “But they are prepared to look at election design more holistically next year.”
“We know we’ve had some influence in 2006, but I look forward to 2012 and beyond…we’re very optimistic that we’ll see some more useable materials out there.”
Jean B. Eggemeyer owns Williamston-based communications and marketing firm Carillon Communications LLC, serving the business and association communities.
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