Lessons from The Politics of Ballot Design: A Review Article

Abstract

WHEN THE 2000 ELECTION REVEALED WEAKNESSES in U.S. election administration, scholars gathered what they knew about the topic. While scholars had not done extensive research on election administration issues, there was some: training election officials,1 punchcard voting machines,2 roll-off,3 straight-party voting,4 the consequences of the Australian ballot,5 and, of course, ballot design.6 Research conducted in the wake of the 2000 election made it starkly clear that because of the hyper-decentralization of elections in the United States, data were not centralized, nor were concepts consistently defined. Even data basic to an election, such as “voter turnout,” was not consistently defined across states or local jurisdictions. Scholars went to work. Elections and election data collection have improved since 2000.7 Scholars and practitioners continue to advance the theoretical and scientific study of election administration, and they are helping improve the day-to-day operations of election administration in the United States. In fact, an interdisciplinary group that includes both scholars and election officials—Election Sciences, Reform, and Administration, or ESRA—has met each summer since 2017. This group's annual conference “brings together election experts from academia, state and local government, non-profits, and research institutes to develop empirical approaches to the study of how law and administrative procedures affect the quality of elections in the United States.”8 Often with guidance from election officials, scholars have examined such important and timely topics as how to operate elections during a pandemic,9 voting rights and disenfranchisement,10 how the public regards elections and their legitimacy,11 and straight-party ballots, as well as other aspects of ballot design.12 Paul Herrnson and colleagues have analyzed the straight-party box on office-block ballots using experimental research (of course, experiments increase confidence in causal inference). Their work is based on usability theory and research: “systems with simple, straightforward, end-to-end design, involving fewer steps, requiring little user memory, giving confirmation of one's actions, and providing system-based help are more effective than systems that have added complexity, require individuals to remember previous actions, do not provide assistance with cognitive tasks, and are inefficient.”13 Election science scholars are still collecting and centralizing data from local jurisdictions (counties and townships) around the nation. One of the latest data points gathered is how much local jurisdictions spend to administer elections.14 While ESRA is a nascent organization, scholars have been publishing important election science research—many times in major journals—for quite some time.