Ballot design samples

This collection of sample ballots highlights common ballot design challenges, AIGA Design for Democracy’s solutions and real progress being made toward easier and more accurate voting for all citizens across the United States.

• Past examples demonstrate ballot design concerns.
• Proposed examples show solutions based on Design for Democracy/U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC) guidelines.
• Before and after comparisons show examples from across the county where ballots have evolved with the benefit of professional design.

Past examples

U.S. election ballots come in thousands of varieties, and many factors influence their differences.

• U.S. Election administration is decentralized, and ballot production is managed by election officials at state, county and local levels.
• Recent ballots exist in various media: paper for hand counting; lever machine; punch-card paper for machine counting (as used in Palm Beach in 2000); optical scan paper for machine counting (as used for lottery tickets and standardized tests); and Direct Recording Electronic (DRE), e.g., touchscreen (like banking ATMs). Most jurisdictions are now using optical scan and/or DRE ballots.
• Officials responsible for the design of ballots rely on outside vendors for ballot layout and counting equipment. Popular vendors of proprietary voting systems include Hart Intercivic, ES&S, Sequoia and Premier. Each offers several machine variations. Open-source voting systems, such as that of the Open Voting Consortium, are also emerging.
• Ballots must accommodate national, state, county and extremely local content.

Thus, the following collection of samples is in no way comprehensive, but rather seeks to demonstrate the range that exists.

Note: To view these samples in context, consider that election officials face many challenges when designing ballots, including: local legislation providing outdated design mandates; constraints associated with ballot layout and counting machines; tight development timeframes and approval cycles; small printing budgets; and lack of familiarity with design and usability best practices.

	November 2004 ballot excerpts (520 KB) from Election Administration Reports, courtesy of Richard G. Smolka, editor
	Sample state and local ballots from 1996 through 2004 (link), organized by state, provided by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)
	November 2000 ballot from Palm Beach County, Florida (144 KB) with the controversial butterfly layout for punch-card voting equipment, courtesy of the Indianapolis Star
	Controversial ballots (link), collected by the Brennan Center for Justice
	AIGA Design for Democracy’s composite optical scan ballot (152 KB) illustrating common design mistakes, based on real November 2004 ballots, designed by Drew Davies and Joe Sparano, Oxide Design Co.

Proposed examples

Design for Democracy is currently helping election officials throughout the country to adopt AIGA’s top 10 election design guidelines and utilize the full ballot and polling place design guidelines and detailed samples created on behalf of the U.S. Election Assistance Commission (EAC), on which the following ballot samples are based.

	AIGA Design for Democracy’s proposed optical scan ballot design (172 KB) based on Design for Democracy and EAC guidelines, adapted by Drew Davies and Joe Sparano, Oxide Design Co.
	AIGA Design for Democracy’s proposed touchscreen ballot design (324 KB) based on Design for Democracy and EAC guidelines, adapted by Drew Davies and Joe Sparano, Oxide Design Co.

Before and after comparisons

In the following voting jurisdictions, ballot designs have evolved with the benefit of professional design guidance or guidelines, with respect to enduring local legislative, budgetary and equipment-based constraints.