post 188

By anders pearson 09 Nov 2000

all this crap about the poor ballot design in florida has been making the usability pundits disgustingly self-righteous and i worry that it will be a long time before we ever hear the end of it. nevertheless, they’ve certainly got a point.

i experienced problems during my very first voting experience. when i was in grade school, we held a mock election. i was zoning out as usual (probably day-dreaming about dinosaurs or planes) while the teacher was explaining to the class that you could check off your choice with either a check mark or an X but that you could only check one box. the warped version of the instructions that made it past the dinosaurs and planes to my brain was that you should use a check to mark the one you want and put an X in the box of the candidate that you didn’t want. so i marched into our makeshift voting booth and checked one box, X-ed out the other. later, the teacher announced the winner and mentioned that someone in the class screwed up and marked both boxes. luckily, it was a secret ballot so i just kept my mouth shut and no one was the wiser.

of course, if you ever hear me tell the story again, don’t be surprised if i change it and in the new version, i performed my first act of rebellion against the system at the tender age of ten when i screwed with a mock election because i realized how much of a sham “democracy” in our country really is…