On Jan 27, 2009, at 6:18 AM, Susan wrote:
Great question. Jared, you said making voting more error-free for
citizens is a difficult problem, can you expand upon why? Could it be
the cost of providing ATM-like touchscreen equipment?
Cost is a small piece of it.
By constitutional law, voting has to be handled by local election
officials. There are 5,000 such officials across the US, each with
different problems to solve. Many are appointed, though some are
elected, but few are trained in the design skills necessary to make
voting easy.
They do not have the skills, time, or resources to make voting a
simple process. Compound this with constantly changing legislative
requirements, equipment manufacturers who aren't cooperative (because
it's not really a profitable business), and very short time schedules
(because ballots are often finalized within a few days of printing and
publishing).
What you end up with is a very complicated landscape with a lot of
factors that go beyond making an "ATM-like" voting machine that anyone
can use.
In my experience, if something is complicated, there's probably good
reasons for it. Complexity is often the path of least resistance,
simplicity takes serious investment.
Jared
Jared M. Spool
User Interface Engineering
510 Turnpike St., Suite 102, North Andover, MA 01845
e: jsp...@uie.com p: +1 978 327 5561
http://uie.com Blog: http://uie.com/brainsparks Twitter: jmspool
UIE Web App Summit, 4/19-4/22: http://webappsummit.com
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