DESIGNER TRICKS
Tom Brennan of Agenda Bender spots a not-so-hidden agenda in one expert's ballot redesign ideas:
[T]hen there's the paragraph that reminds you that sometimes it's a good thing bureaucracies are so rule bound and innovation averse. Slate presented the ballot design problem to a few freelance designers. Two of the three examples of the work Slate displays are indeed improvements over the one official Cali ballot that accompanies the article. Oh, but that third makeover:
Hugh Dubberly, an interaction designer in San Francisco, simplified the type treatments, arrows, and boxes in his proposed Ballot B and also moved the column in which voters mark their choice to the left side of the page next to the candidate names, arguing that their proximity would minimize voting errors. He also proposed a somewhat radical solution to the 133-name-crunch problem by only printing the names of the serious candidates--the ones who'd participated in the final debate.
Yes, that would be a somewhat radical solution. Throw 128 candidates off the ballot. Certainly solves the clutter problem, and Hugh's ballot is a hymn to soothing whitespace. Eliminate the messy (but essential) details and call it interaction design. Simplify the type treatments, and simplify the hell out of democracy while you're at it.