Build a better ballot

With their lawyers busy fighting over the ballot count in Florida, can George Bush and Al Gore agree that the part of the election system that should be examined first is not the Electoral College but the ballots themselves and the procedures used to safeguard them? They should. Some simple changes could prevent the kind of mistakes and oddities highlighted in this close race from occurring again.

The Electoral College, which is blamed for all kinds of disappointments in the election outcomes, was immediately identified as the suspect in the extended presidential race. But the kinds of problems that have Democrats so excited and had Republicans demanding an end to the recounts had nothing to do with the Electoral College. Instead, they had been brought on by poorly designed ballots, inadequate training of poll volunteers and lax oversight of collected ballots. Fortunately, these are issues that can be quickly addressed.

There is, for instance, no good reason to have hundreds of different designs for ballots or the method by which voters registers their votes. Check-offs, punch-outs, X’s, connect the arrow, pull the lever, push the button, you’d think after 224 years of doing this the nation would agree on a preferred system and stick with it. Technophiles look at the problems in Florida and say voting by computer is the answer for the 21st century, but the country still hasn’t worked the bugs out of 18th-century pen and paper.

The same goes for such low-tech difficulties of having enough ballots on hand, of ensuring that all volunteers know that voters get more than one chance to fill out a ballot if they make a mistake and that getting those completed ballots to election officials is immensely important. But Congress can start with the ballots.

A survey of just a few months would tell a congressional commission of the many different ways Americans register their votes. A little more digging could tell it which were effective and which led to confusion. The commission’s role would be to set a standard, with a widely available model, of a ballot that works. That is, one that is clear, reasonably foolproof, flexible enough to accommodate the range of questions voters will encounter and inexpensive. It may not even be necessary to require the use of such a ballot; frustrated voters, of the sort heard screaming last week in Palm Beach County, Fla., would demand it.

There’s nothing glamorous about designing a better ballot, but the lack of one is at least partly responsible for the current national tumult. With Congress and the next occupant of the White House headed for what could be chronic gridlock on a dozen issues, here is one that could be of practical help to the voting public and, perhaps, to the careers of the politicians themselves.