Contact: Susan King Roth, (614) 688-3242; [email protected]Written by Jeff Grabmeier, (614) 292-8457; [email protected]
STUDY: PUNCH CARD BALLOTS ERROR-PRONE, UNPOPULAR WITH VOTERS
COLUMBUS, Ohio - A 1998 study of 32 Ohio voters in a simulated election found that punch-card voting systems may produce error rates as high as 15 percent for some voters.
Researchers videotaped test subjects who were instructed to vote for specific candidates and issues in a mock election using actual ballots and punch-card equipment. They then examined how accurately the test subjects recorded the votes they were told to make.
In interviews after the study, the majority of the subjects said they disliked the punch-card system, said Susan King Roth, author of the study and professor of industrial, interior and visual communication design at Ohio State University.
"Subjects had real concerns about the use of the punch card as a vote recording device," Roth said.
These results suggest that the problems reported by some voters who used punch cards in Palm Beach Florida last week are not unexpected.
"The problems voters have with punch cards are inherent in the design of punch-card ballots and are not the result of inadequacies of the voters themselves," Roth said.
The study, published in 1998 in Information Design Journal, was titled "Disenfranchised by design: voting systems and the election process."
Subjects in the study complained that they weren't sure which hole to punch to correspond with the candidate or issue they were voting for, Roth said. Similar complaints were made by voters in Palm Beach.
The 32 subjects in the study ranged in age from 18 to 65 and included 17 women and 15 men.
Although the overall error rate was 15 percent, eight of the subjects - 25 percent of those in the study -- were responsible for 93 percent of the errors and 13 subjects made no errors at all. Half of the eight subjects who generated the most errors were elderly.
"Error rates may vary somewhat, but punch cards have inherent flaws that make errors more likely," Roth said. "Overvoting or voting for more than one candidate is a known problem in punch card systems that regularly causes a certain percentage of ballots to be discarded. Punch card ballots should be replaced entirely with other systems, or at least redesigned to eliminate existing problems."
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