Re: Practicing voting (usability)
Hi.
This being an engineering group, I have to
insist on correct use of the term, NEGATIVE
feedback, which is what you seem to be describing.
Positive feedback is for an absoulte monarch, who
has no desire for voting, knows everything,
and kills those who dispute it.
All should object to positive feedback,
because nothing can be engineered on it
except disappointment and failure.
--
John
jwill@AstraGate.net
John Michael Williams
Robert N. Smith wrote:
>
> Jon Millers' key words "positive feedback" sound like a requirement. I
> agree.
>
> The "positive feedback" that I would anticipate would be a small
> piece of paper like you get from some gasoline pumps (in the form of a
> receipt).
> I am envisioning a small piece of paper the size of a business card.
> I believe some states encode a large amount of data on the drivers license
> in a compressed format.
>
> The feedback could be encrypted with the voters authentication key and
> might only be read back by an official voting center machine.
>
> Lets say the voter completes his transaction, the voter reviews the
> data on the machine before it is committed, then the voter goes to
> checkout and gets a hard copy of the votes he or she cast. Some time
> later (minutes or days) the voter takes the encoded paper back to an
> official device that will re-display what is on the encoded paper.
> This form of feedback should not cost much more than those "I voted"
> stickers many precincts hand out.
>
> Robert
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-stds-1583@majordomo.ieee.org
> [mailto:owner-stds-1583@majordomo.ieee.org]On Behalf Of Jon Miller
> Sent: Sunday, November 25, 2001 7:10 AM
> To: stds-1583@ieee.org
> Subject: RE: Practicing voting (usability)
>
> The point of my original messages was that the device needs to be
> designed in a way that is simple enough to use that it wouldn't require
> a "lot" of training... In New York, we still use these lever devices in
> the voting booth ( a bit of living nostalgia, but certainly not an
> endorsement of the approach ).
>
> The votes cast should result in positive feedback to the voter in that
> it represents what they really wanted to do. Putting a training mode in
> the voting booth is a bad idea for the "few" cases of confusion that it
> might generate and be publicized, placing the election results in a
> shadow of doubt.
>
> I also don't believe that an instructional video in the booth is a good
> idea just for the time factor. When a line is out the door and around
> the block, you don't want people leaving the polling place saying they
> could not wait for the time it took to get their turn to vote. Such
> instructions as a distinctly separate part of the booth is a very good
> idea though. It could be playing in a loop on a screen in the polling
> place - or as a televised broadcast or shown on the news etc...
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-stds-1583@majordomo.ieee.org
> [mailto:owner-stds-1583@majordomo.ieee.org] On Behalf Of Michael Michael
> Motorcycle
> Sent: Saturday, November 24, 2001 10:12 PM
> To: stds-1583@ieee.org
> Subject: Re: Practicing voting (usability)
>
> When we had the old lever machines, we had a small test
> section, with a couple of levers, that people could handle
> while in line, to get the feel. I don't think it's
> unreasonable to have a similar facsimile for people to see
> before getting into the booth. It doesn't have to be the
> real machine. It could even be a simulation on a PC.
>
> That's probably not part of this standard, but we could
> offer it as a recommendation, more as an afterthought.