A healthy democracy requires that every citizen has an equal opportunity to effectively participate, including voting in elections. This means that, at minimum, every eligible voter has an equal opportunity to cast a ballot, that their ballot is successfully counted, and that each ballot carries equal weight in elections. But bad ballot design substantially limits the equality of our democratic system. In fact, in every election cycle hundreds of thousands of votes go uncounted because of poorly designed ballots.
Bad ballot design increases both the number of overvotes (when voters select too many candidates in a contest) and undervotes (when voters fail to select any or not enough candidates in a contest) as well as ballot roll-off (when voters don’t complete races further down on the ballot). When this happens, their vote for that contest is unrecorded. In races where margins of victory of small, poor ballot design even has the potential to sway elections.
Nationally, an average of 1 percent of all ballots cast since 2004 included either an overvote or undervote. However, residual vote rates—the total number of over and undervotes divided by the total number of people who turned out to vote—are disproportionately higher in certain districts. This is partly because ballot design varies greatly across jurisdictions. In North Carolina alone, there are more than 2,000 different ballot designs! A wide range of studies analyzing multiple elections have found that counties with higher populations of Black, Hispanic, low-income, less educated, and older voters have higher rates of unrecorded votes, in part because of faulty ballot design.
Poorly designed mail-in ballots can also result in high numbers of rejections and curing, the process by which voters can correct errors on their ballots. In Pennsylvania, 17,000 mail-in ballots, or about 2.8 percent of the total number of mail-in ballots cast in the 2023 primary election, were rejected and went uncounted. Ballots were uncounted for multiple reasons, including arriving after election day, missing dates or signatures, incorrect dates, or the lack of a secrecy envelope. In response, election administrators redesigned mail-in ballot envelopes, rewrote the instructions, and made other design alterations to reduce voter error in 2024 elections.
Confusing or incomplete voting instructions, such as instructions separated from associated tasks or that include technical language, can lead to high rates of ballot error. For example, several counties in Ohio included the unclear phrase “select the set of joint candidates” in their 2010 ballot instructions. Consequently, these counties reported higher rates of overvotes in the gubernatorial contest. Cuyahoga County, for example, had over 2,000 uncounted gubernatorial overvotes.
Another common design flaw occurs when ballots fail to clearly differentiate between races, which can lead to a high number of undervotes. For example, Broward County, Florida’s 2018 paper ballots didn’t clearly differentiate between voting instructions and contests when instructions and a senatorial contest were listed in a single column, resulting in a nine percent difference in votes for that race in Broward compared to the rest of the state’s counties.
Science-backed recommendations to improve ballot design
To combat these and other design errors, UCS has written a report and fact sheet that identifies a series of specific science-backed recommendations that include adhering to the US Election Assistance Commission’s design guidelines, listing candidates in continuous columns, and conducting pre-election usability tests to identify any design flaws before elections take place.
In addition to being better designed for all voters, ballots and voter education materials also need to be designed for voters with limited English proficiency (LEP) and voters with disabilities. Despite laws intended to make our elections accessible and open to every eligible voter, persistent inequalities and inaccessibility mean that LEP voters and voters with disabilities are systematically excluded from fully participating in our elections.
In 1975, Congress amended the Voting Rights Act (VRA) to include Section 203. This created protected language subdivisions, or jurisdictions where at least five percent of the population are in a language minority group, have lower literacy rates, or don’t have English proficiency. Jurisdictions that have protected language subdivisions must translate election materials. Thirty states currently have Section 203 covered populations.
Access to translated election materials has been shown to increase registration rates and turnout for Latinos and Asian Americans. However, some jurisdictions with VRA-covered populations fail to fully comply with federal requirements. Even if jurisdictions do fully comply, the law only extends coverage to certain languages. This means that jurisdictions with a substantial number of citizens who speak languages not covered by the VRA aren’t required to provide translated materials. Moreover, since the current Section 203 population threshold is set at five percent, many LEP voters are left without access to translated election materials.
Consequently, we recommend that states voluntarily lower the coverage threshold from five percent to three percent as some states, like California and Colorado, have already done. We also recommend that states voluntarily expand the language coverage beyond those expressly named in the VRA.
Yet, even if election administrators choose to lower thresholds and expand language coverage, election offices often struggle to accurately estimate the number of voters who will need language accommodations. To help identify voters who will need translated ballots and other election materials, state registration forms should include an optional question about their language preferences, which California already does.
Like language accessibility, there are also several federal laws intended to make election accessible for voters with disabilities. However, voters with disabilities consistently vote at lower rates and when they do turnout, they are more likely to report difficulties voting. Among the difficulties voters with disabilities identify are elements of ballot design—text size, line spacing, unclear differentiation between contests, and so on.
To make in-person voting more accessible, polling places should use electronic poll-books that would make signing in more accessible for voters with disabilities and can result in shorter wait times for all voters. Lastly, states should waive signature matching or make them more accessible by allowing voters to sign digitally or with a stamp.
To avoid the challenges commonly associated with voting in person, voters with disabilities frequently choose to vote by mail/absentee ballot. Despite making voting more equitable for those with disabilities, online applications to vote by mail are largely inaccessible. One survey found that voters with disabilities were more than twice as likely as those without disabilities to have difficulty voting by mail. States also often require that absentee ballot be printed out, signed, and mailed to election offices—something that may be hard for voters with disabilities. Instead, we recommend that states adopt accessible vote-by-mail systems that permit voters with disabilities to use online platforms that can be used with assistive technology to mark and submit ballots.
Vital to both language and disability accessibility is the open collaboration between election offices and community groups that represent these populations. An important piece of this collaboration includes conducting pre-election usability tests to make sure that election materials are adequately accessible and post-election accessibility audits that check that accessibility policies were properly carried out.
The importance of voter education material design
To vote, people need to know basic information about the location of their polling place, what candidates and issues are going to appear on the ballot, and important election dates—all things that are communicated through voter education materials. In a world where voters increasingly rely on government websites for election information, it is important for state and local election officials to design high-quality and effective online voter education materials. A sizable percentage of voters visit local election office websites to learn the information they need to vote. When people are unable to find this information, they are less likely to vote.
Unfortunately, information can sometimes be difficult to find, especially in certain communities. A 2012 study found that counties with higher concentrations of people of color had election website homepages and webpages with fewer items and keywords. Limited English proficiency voters and voters with disabilities also face significant barriers to finding information about elections and voting. An analysis of state voter education plans between 2004 and 2013 showed few activities connected to voter education efforts specifically for LEP voters and voters with disabilities and often these plans didn’t even meet minimum language requirements set by federal law.
When government election office websites offer translations, they are frequently computer generated. However, automated translations services have been criticized for inaccuracies. Relatedly, while these websites are required to be accessible for people with disabilities by federal law, multiple scientific studies have found that most aren’t. Even at the federal level, thirty percent of federal agency homepages failed accessibility tests conducted in 2021.
At minimum, voter education materials should cover essential topics such as voter registration, polling place locations, provide answers to voter’s frequently asked questions, inform voters of key dates and deadlines, and any new election laws or policies. Importantly, voter education resources should be available in various including online, paper, and via social media.
Materials specifically designed for LEP voters should convey this information in a variety of languages, as well as informing voters who may be unfamiliar with basic information about US elections about ways voters can cast ballots, how to accurately mark ballots, and should highlight available language accommodations.
Similarly, voter education materials for voters with disabilities should inform voters of available disability accessibility policies. Moreover, materials should be designed with a variety of disabilities in mind and avoid background patterns, text boxes, and tables. Finally, state and local government websites should adopt accessibility features such as allowing users to adjust contrast levels and font sizes as well as translating materials using human translators or computer-assisted translations checked by human translators; webpages should post disclaimers about the origins of any translations.
A healthy democracy
User-friendly ballots can have a decisive effect on democracy. When ballots are easy to use, voters are more likely to cast a ballot for the candidate they intend to vote for and are more likely to have their ballots counted.
The ability to vote, freely and fairly, is the bedrock of a healthy democracy. Focusing on improving ballot design is a relatively easy way to improve US democracy, allow voters to more effectively participate in the process and hold elected officials accountable.