Election Day!

Today is Election Day here in Virginia; we are voting for new State-level senators and delegates, along with local-level politicans. I voted today in the races where I felt educated. I did not vote for the new appointee to the soil and water board.

There was one big human factors issue from today: the voting machines. I haven’t seen too many problems while waiting in line, but there is one problem that I have always seen occur. Always. Once you’re done checking things off on the ballot, there is a big red button that says “VOTE” that you have to press. It looks like this:

You’re supposed to press the button, and then you get the confirmation screen:

The problem is that many people never realize that they have to press the big red button to actually cast their vote. Election officials often have to run after someone to have them press the button. Why?

If we adopt the mindset of the software developers, I believe the thinking goes like this: We want to give people one last chance to make changes, so there should be a big button at the very end that confirms once and for all that they will cast their ballot. It should be on its own screen to emphasize the finality of it. Let’s make it red and really big so people won’t miss it!

Back to the real world: this is valid thinking! People notice salient objects. Big bright things capture attention very nicely (Tsai & Peterson, 2006), and the fact that it says “VOTE” should indicate that people should press it to vote. So why don’t people press it? The thinking probably goes like this: I’ve checked off the boxes on who I want to vote for and the other ballot issues, so I’m done. I’m at a screen that says “VOTE” which must mean that it’s ready for the next person to vote. Great, all done!
Alternate ending: I see a screen that says “VOTE”… it looks like I’m done, I don’t think I have any buttons on this screen.

So what happened? Two things.

1. The word “VOTE” on the big red button is not especially descriptive. It makes perfect sense that a new user would walk up to the screen and have to press the button to begin. Yes, there are instructions above the button, but who reads those? The button is big enough. Put the instructions on the button. Group them together on the salient object, and the instruction “PRESS HERE TO CAST YOUR BALLOT” should be informative.
2. The button is really big. Like, unusually big. The rest of the interface doesn’t have buttons that big. It is possible that people can’t even tell that it’s a button that needs pressing. It’s not a user interface widget people are used to, so they don’t know what to do with it. Therefore, they don’t do anything.

Either way, these are both small issues that could be fixed. The clearer instructions would solve both issues. I’m sure these devices have been tested by users, but they’ve also been used for the past few years. Has there been no feedback from election officials on the Big Red Button issue? A simple change may save quite a bit of trouble.