I sent a complaint letter back home. This is it.
I feel like such a hanging chad.
Yesterday, I filled out my absentee voter ballot for Berkeley County.
I'm an expat of four years, but I still deeply care about American
politics, I'm still a citizen, and I vote. Rather than a printed
ballot with words on, as it was in 2000, this year's ballot is a
Scan-Tron card. This is a type of card with small squares or ovals,
which are filled in with a dark color and which can then be optically
scanned using a special machine.
You should see this ballot: there's no writing on it anywhere. You
have to go back and forth between the four pages of instructions and
the card to make sense of it. It is actually worse than the Florida
ballots that were supposed to be so confusing back in 2000. At least
the Florida ballots had English words on them, and were not composed
entirely of tiny numbered squares. Since the "office use only" bubbles
were filled out in ink, I filled out my part in ink too, only to find
when I double-checked that you're supposed to use #2 pencil. Oops. I
haven't used a Scan-Tron since 1991, when I used to get pop quizzes on
them at college. And it's too late to get a new ballot, whatever
happens.
From the look of that form, you would seriously think they didn't want
people to vote absentee at all. I have taken a picture of mine:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dyfferent/lj_images/vote.jpg if the
attachment doesn't work. I put my hand over the area I filled in. If
you don't believe me or think the photo must be doctored, I'm sure the
county voter registration office would be glad to show you what one
looks like.
Yes, that is a series of boxes, numbered 1 to 256, with no explanatory
text whatsoever on the actual ballot.
The vote this year is only a few questions: ten in all if you count
the candidates who are running for offices unopposed. Why didn't the
Election Commmission think a supposedly close-run Presidential
election was enough reason to print up a custom ballot with words on
it, clearly showing which space went with which candidate? Didn't we
learn anything from Florida? Does Berkeley County really have so many
absentee voters that the votes can't be counted by a person, but
require a machine to do it?
Scan-Trons aren't that accurate, either, unless they've changed a lot
in 12 years. When we had them, the instructor always had to
hand-correct the machine's mistakes; any little smudge in transit
confused it and caused it to mis-mark cards. What's the policy on
that with the voter board? Is anyone going to check to make sure the
machine worked properly on each card?
Further, are US #2 pencils available everywhere around the globe?
Maybe it just never occurred to whomever thought this up that there's
not a Wal-Mart in Timbuktu.
Luckily, I found some made-in-USA pencils at the local art supply
store yesterday afternoon and filled in over my unfortunate ink so
it's all shiny graphite on its surface. Will that work, or have I
still rendered my vote invalid? I wanted to vote so badly.
I hope that going over it with pencil will suffice.
I am so ashamed that I filled this out wrong. I have a college
degree. I read all the time. Why did I make such a mistake? I
really debated whether I should complain about this and expose my
stupidity, but I decided that looking stupid is less important than
getting the word out.
It's not just a few nonmilitary expats who might have trouble with
this thing--I feel it's thoroughly bad for everyone.
I honestly think this form of voting would confuse anyone who wasn't
really determined to vote, very careful, and highly literate. I am
determined to vote and literate, and it obviously confused me.
http://www.tridentliteracy.org/html/community_need.html
This Scan-Tron ballot was printed for a county with a 25% functional
illiteracy rate. This isn't a small number of people. It's a LOT of
people.
I feel sure that some of the older folks who usually absentee vote
because they're not physically able to go to a polling station will be
disenfranchised by this.
Functionally illiterate is not the same as illiterate. For example,
someone who reads at 8th grade level or below would be able to read
SMITH/JONES in the polling booth and push the button beside their
names. If it were on paper, s/he could read SMITH/JONES and mark
that as his/her choice. It's a reading task most folks could manage.
However, this 2004 form requires you to read four letter-sized pages
of instruction and then find the right little ballot card bubbles (ten
out of 256), bubbling each in correctly using the appropriate type of
pencil. The older folks especially were not brought up "bubbling in"
standardised tests in public school as we were. It seems cruel to
foist Scan-Trons on them now.
This is, seriously, a much more complicated reading comprehension task
than the ballot we had in 2000.
My late grandmother used to be one of the 25%. She was pulled out of
school when she was ten to help take care of siblings. She could read
and do sums, but only to a certain level of complexity. It
embarrassed her that she wasn't better at reading. She could read
most stories in the newspaper, recipes, etc. But if this form
confused me, I feel pretty safe in saying it would've confused her.
She also had cataracts, so fine print was a nightmare. I used to help
her read things like complicated utility and tax bills.
She would've voted this year if she hadn't passed away in April.
As it is, I'm sure many of her former peers are confused now. Some of
them may swallow their pride and ask for help to vote. But I think
probably a lot of them will be too ashamed.
Even if someone is literate, if their vision is poor they may still be
disenfranchised by this form. The squares of the ballot are tiny and,
because they're boxed-in text, difficult to read. Additionally the
card is printed in red and pink, colors that not everyone sees well
(for some people the edges of the text would be as hard to see as
printing in yellow ink).
It just seems deliberately exclusionary to give this hard-to-read,
hard-to-fill-out format of ballot to absentee voters, when many of
them are elderly or disabled and when such a large number of people
overall in Berkeley County are functionally illiterate. Literacy
tests in order to be allowed to vote were abolished by the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, but this looks like a subtle way of bringing them
back.
I realize I shot myself in the foot this year, and it's too late to
start over now. But however flawed as it may be, I'm sending in my
slightly inky ballot. I can only hope it counts. I have to try.
I hope we'll all try.
I hope that everyone who has a car will volunteer to help their
elderly or disabled neighbors to the polls rather than leaving them to
deal with this form. I hope people in South Carolina will do their
best to help each other to vote, no matter whom they're voting for.
And I hope next year the form will be a little more realistic. At
minimum they could make it easier to read and with an appropriate
number of squares for the questions asked.
Voting is a vital right, and we have to protect that right by
exercising it.
Thank you for reading this. I really appreciate it.
Sincerely,
dyfferent
Yesterday, I filled out my absentee voter ballot for Berkeley County.
I'm an expat of four years, but I still deeply care about American
politics, I'm still a citizen, and I vote. Rather than a printed
ballot with words on, as it was in 2000, this year's ballot is a
Scan-Tron card. This is a type of card with small squares or ovals,
which are filled in with a dark color and which can then be optically
scanned using a special machine.
You should see this ballot: there's no writing on it anywhere. You
have to go back and forth between the four pages of instructions and
the card to make sense of it. It is actually worse than the Florida
ballots that were supposed to be so confusing back in 2000. At least
the Florida ballots had English words on them, and were not composed
entirely of tiny numbered squares. Since the "office use only" bubbles
were filled out in ink, I filled out my part in ink too, only to find
when I double-checked that you're supposed to use #2 pencil. Oops. I
haven't used a Scan-Tron since 1991, when I used to get pop quizzes on
them at college. And it's too late to get a new ballot, whatever
happens.
From the look of that form, you would seriously think they didn't want
people to vote absentee at all. I have taken a picture of mine:
http://homepage.ntlworld.com/dyfferent/lj_images/vote.jpg if the
attachment doesn't work. I put my hand over the area I filled in. If
you don't believe me or think the photo must be doctored, I'm sure the
county voter registration office would be glad to show you what one
looks like.
Yes, that is a series of boxes, numbered 1 to 256, with no explanatory
text whatsoever on the actual ballot.
The vote this year is only a few questions: ten in all if you count
the candidates who are running for offices unopposed. Why didn't the
Election Commmission think a supposedly close-run Presidential
election was enough reason to print up a custom ballot with words on
it, clearly showing which space went with which candidate? Didn't we
learn anything from Florida? Does Berkeley County really have so many
absentee voters that the votes can't be counted by a person, but
require a machine to do it?
Scan-Trons aren't that accurate, either, unless they've changed a lot
in 12 years. When we had them, the instructor always had to
hand-correct the machine's mistakes; any little smudge in transit
confused it and caused it to mis-mark cards. What's the policy on
that with the voter board? Is anyone going to check to make sure the
machine worked properly on each card?
Further, are US #2 pencils available everywhere around the globe?
Maybe it just never occurred to whomever thought this up that there's
not a Wal-Mart in Timbuktu.
Luckily, I found some made-in-USA pencils at the local art supply
store yesterday afternoon and filled in over my unfortunate ink so
it's all shiny graphite on its surface. Will that work, or have I
still rendered my vote invalid? I wanted to vote so badly.
I hope that going over it with pencil will suffice.
I am so ashamed that I filled this out wrong. I have a college
degree. I read all the time. Why did I make such a mistake? I
really debated whether I should complain about this and expose my
stupidity, but I decided that looking stupid is less important than
getting the word out.
It's not just a few nonmilitary expats who might have trouble with
this thing--I feel it's thoroughly bad for everyone.
I honestly think this form of voting would confuse anyone who wasn't
really determined to vote, very careful, and highly literate. I am
determined to vote and literate, and it obviously confused me.
http://www.tridentliteracy.org/html/community_need.html
This Scan-Tron ballot was printed for a county with a 25% functional
illiteracy rate. This isn't a small number of people. It's a LOT of
people.
I feel sure that some of the older folks who usually absentee vote
because they're not physically able to go to a polling station will be
disenfranchised by this.
Functionally illiterate is not the same as illiterate. For example,
someone who reads at 8th grade level or below would be able to read
SMITH/JONES in the polling booth and push the button beside their
names. If it were on paper, s/he could read SMITH/JONES and mark
that as his/her choice. It's a reading task most folks could manage.
However, this 2004 form requires you to read four letter-sized pages
of instruction and then find the right little ballot card bubbles (ten
out of 256), bubbling each in correctly using the appropriate type of
pencil. The older folks especially were not brought up "bubbling in"
standardised tests in public school as we were. It seems cruel to
foist Scan-Trons on them now.
This is, seriously, a much more complicated reading comprehension task
than the ballot we had in 2000.
My late grandmother used to be one of the 25%. She was pulled out of
school when she was ten to help take care of siblings. She could read
and do sums, but only to a certain level of complexity. It
embarrassed her that she wasn't better at reading. She could read
most stories in the newspaper, recipes, etc. But if this form
confused me, I feel pretty safe in saying it would've confused her.
She also had cataracts, so fine print was a nightmare. I used to help
her read things like complicated utility and tax bills.
She would've voted this year if she hadn't passed away in April.
As it is, I'm sure many of her former peers are confused now. Some of
them may swallow their pride and ask for help to vote. But I think
probably a lot of them will be too ashamed.
Even if someone is literate, if their vision is poor they may still be
disenfranchised by this form. The squares of the ballot are tiny and,
because they're boxed-in text, difficult to read. Additionally the
card is printed in red and pink, colors that not everyone sees well
(for some people the edges of the text would be as hard to see as
printing in yellow ink).
It just seems deliberately exclusionary to give this hard-to-read,
hard-to-fill-out format of ballot to absentee voters, when many of
them are elderly or disabled and when such a large number of people
overall in Berkeley County are functionally illiterate. Literacy
tests in order to be allowed to vote were abolished by the Voting
Rights Act of 1965, but this looks like a subtle way of bringing them
back.
I realize I shot myself in the foot this year, and it's too late to
start over now. But however flawed as it may be, I'm sending in my
slightly inky ballot. I can only hope it counts. I have to try.
I hope we'll all try.
I hope that everyone who has a car will volunteer to help their
elderly or disabled neighbors to the polls rather than leaving them to
deal with this form. I hope people in South Carolina will do their
best to help each other to vote, no matter whom they're voting for.
And I hope next year the form will be a little more realistic. At
minimum they could make it easier to read and with an appropriate
number of squares for the questions asked.
Voting is a vital right, and we have to protect that right by
exercising it.
Thank you for reading this. I really appreciate it.
Sincerely,
dyfferent