GeekPress: Tech Support for Florida Voters

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Notice: GeekPress is back up and running, thanks to Paul! It's still a not-so-serious tech news blog, but the format is significantly looser. Diana, having given up programming for philosophy, has her own philosophical blog NoodleFood. More of her work can be found at DianaHsieh.com.

Tech Support for Florida Voters
by Diana Hsieh / 13 November 2000

There has been, as we all know, much excitement over the Florida ballots. Some voters are filing lawsuits claiming that they have been disenfranchised by the confusing butterfly ballot in Palm Beach County. Why does this fiasco remind me of a tech support horror story?

As with just about all instructions and interfaces, the butterfly ballots certainly could have been more user-friendly. Nevertheless, I have very little sympathy for the voters who punched Buchanan rather than Gore or who punched two presidential candidates. These voters had a chance to object to the ballot when it was published in the paper. A sample ballot was sent to their homes. If they had questions about the ballot design, they could have asked an election worker. These voters cast invalid ballots because they were (at best) inattentive and (at worst) stupid. They were not disenfranchised; voters cannot be disenfranchised by their personal failure to follow simple instructions.

Some mistakes, I admit, are often only obvious in retrospect. So I didn't fully make up my mind on this issue until I heard Sean Hannity report on Fox News that a group of eight year olds all managed to successfully vote for their favorite Disney character using a butterfly ballot. (Perhaps those confused Palm Beach voters ought to bring a child, grandchild, or a neighbor kid to help them cast their ballot properly at the next election.)

The Florida voters who cast invalid ballots because they failed to follow simple instructions bear a striking resemblance to some confused first-time computer users calling tech support. They didn't read the manual when setting up their computer, installing software, or ejecting a floppy disk. Mistakes are made, the computer stops working, and tech support is called.

Some Florida mis-voters, like some first-time computer owners calling tech support, accept their mistakes as their own and vow to read the instructions in the future. But others, those filing lawsuits, are an altogether different sort of person: inattentive during the election and irresponsible after it. These mis-voters failed to read the instructions. They failed to figure out a ballot format that was obvious to eight year olds. They punched the wrong hole. But their mistake is someone else's fault. They want to overturn an election because they weren't smart enough to vote properly like most everyone else. These mis-voters are like the computer users that populate tech support horror stories. They not merely uninformed or confused, they are belligerent and irresponsible, blaming everyone else for their failures.

(Of course, lots of computer users call tech support because the software or hardware is faulty or the instructions are wrong, but that's a different story.)

Just as computer buyers who choose to call tech support instead of reading the manual are a huge drain on a company's resources, this argument that the confusing-to-some ballot disenfranchised voters is not without consequences. Two serious dangers lurk within it. First, it opens the door to contesting just about any future election. Second, voters are in danger of being "misenfranchised" by the subjective nature hand counts.

If this argument about the confusing ballots is widely accepted, any future election could be contested on the grounds that some voters were confused about the ballot. After all, some people will always fail to vote properly because they failed to pay attention. Election results could thus be routinely held up in court for weeks or months as a result. Election officials ought to make every reasonable effort to make the ballots clear, easy, and understandable, as well as to educate voters about casting those ballots properly. If some voters are still confused and still unable to follow simple instructions, then their votes ought not be counted. But if these lawsuits are even remotely successful, we'll be seeing a proliferation of election lawsuits for years to come.

The second danger of this "confusing ballot" argument is that some voters will be "misenfranchised" by a hand count in which election officials attempt to somehow determine the intentions of those voters. In other words, due to the subjective nature of a hand count, a ballot could be counted as a vote for a candidate that the voter actually opposed. The only thing worse than not having your vote count is having your vote count for the candidate you hate! Precisely those kinds of mistakes will happen to a certain number of voters, who will never know that their misinterpreted votes might have cost their preferred candidate the election. In fact, due to the degradation of the punch-card ballots with handling, every recount increases the risk of more voters being "misenfranchised."

As a result of this Florida election fiasco, I'm sure that many states will upgrade their election equipment to more modern technology. That's great. Let's just hope that the lawsuits of the voters claiming disenfranchisement are quickly dismissed. Perhaps then people will realize that reading the instructions, when voting or setting up a computer, is worth their while.

About the Author

Diana Hsieh is the owner and co-editor of GeekPress, an irreverent filter for the most unique and interesting technical news of the day. Diana also sporadically writes and lectures on philosophy, Objectivism in particular. She can be reached via e-mail to diana(at)geekpress.com.