Butterfly ballot put to the test

Hours after the residents of Palm Beach County, Fla., cast their votes, rumors regarding the controversial butterfly ballot began to fly. The ballots were confusing, they said, and it was impossible to tell who you were voting for.\nThings did indeed look fishy, with Reform Party Candidate Pat Buchanan's vote three times larger in Palm Beach than in other Florida counties. The trouble was that all the reports of mispunched ballots were purely anecdotal, without empirical evidence to back them up.\nIntrigued, a group of IU psychology professors decided to find out for themselves just how confusing the Palm Beach ballot really was. Over two days, the group collected data from 1,168 undergraduates in introductory psychology classes. \nThe professors gave them a butterfly ballot and asked them to vote for a certain candidate based on when the student's birthday was. For example, a student born between the 14th and 26th of any month or year was asked to vote for Gore. Students were also asked to indicate whether they had heard anything about the ballot from friends or the news media. \nOf the 1,168 students sampled, 32.6 percent, or 381, were considered "naive voters" -- that is, they indicated they had never heard about the ballot or about any controversy surrounding it. Out of these samples, 99.44 percent of students intending to vote for Bush voted for him, and 0.56 percent voted incorrectly. Only 95.36 percent of students intending to vote for Gore voted for him, with 4.64 percent voting incorrectly. \n"Any election is going to have errors in it," said assistant psychology professor Cindy Hoffman, spokeswoman for the professors involved in the experiment. "But I think the comparison between those who made a mistake voting for Bush and those who made a mistake voting for Gore is really significant." \nHoffman said the anecdotal accounts of voters who felt cheated by the butterfly ballot were what led the group to conduct the study.\n"We really wanted to answer the question of whether or not this was a ballot that caused more errors for Gore over Bush," Hoffman said. "Certainly it's a system that needs improvement." \nHoffman also said that while one could infer that about 12,000 ballots were intended for Gore by taking the 4.64 percent difference between Bush and Gore found in the study and applying it to Palm Beach County, the numbers would only be an estimate. \n"The numbers are big because Palm Beach County is big," said Hoffman. "But there's really no way to be sure of the exact numbers." \nSophomore Kristin Scroggs, who participated in the study, said she could see how the ballot would be confusing.\n"I think it would be especially confusing for older people," Scoggs said. "I think they should get to vote again, because you just assume when you vote that Gore is going to be right there, and he's not."\nSophomore Jamie Ward voted with an absentee Chicago butterfly ballot and said that while he didn't find it confusing, he could understand how others might. \n"Obviously there was some confusion, since they had to disqualify 20,000 ballots," said Ward. "You just have to be careful when you cast your vote"