[IP] The great Sarasota undervote mystery

[David Farber <dave@farber.net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: Roger Dannenberg <rbd@cs.cmu.edu>
Date: May 3, 2007 9:17:53 PM EDT
To: dave@farber.net
Subject: Re: [IP] The great Sarasota undervote mystery

For IP if you wish:

Stephen Unger's analysis at http://www1.cs.columbia.edu/~unger/myBlog/ 
endsandmeansblog.html
dismisses the idea that poor design caused voters to miss the  
congressional race, using a rather weak analogy to another ballot.  
Having seen the Sarasota ballot pages in sequence, I think there's no  
comparison to the Mecklenburg County ballot. What's the basis for  
claiming the latter is "far more clumsy"?

These questions could be put to rest using a fairly small study using  
human subjects and simulations of the ballots. I overheard someone  
say there was such a study, but I don't know the details -- maybe  
someone here can provide a reference.

Mike Shamos gave a very interesting lecture on the report at CMU  
recently. www.cylab.cmu.edu says webcast archives are available via  
"the members-only portal"

-Roger Dannenberg



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