Paul S. Herrnson

Frederick G. Conrad

Benjamin B. Bederson

Richard G. Niemi

Michael W. Traugott

Michael J. Hanmer

Voting difficulties hung over America's presidential election in 2000 like a dark cloud. Hanging chads, a butterfly ballot, and the Supreme Court remain the most vivid memories of that political donnybrook. Passage of 2002's Help America Vote Act sparked further interest in the physical process of casting a ballot, yet several recent contests still produced confusion at the polls. A solution to at least some of those problems may be found in new technology, but such innovations carry their own concerns and questions. V oting Technology is the first book to investigate in a scientific and authoritative manner how voters respond to the new equipment. The authors—an interdisciplinary group of experts in American elections, political behavior, human-computer interaction, and human factors psychology—assess five commercially available voting systems, each one representing a specific class based on shared design principles, as well as a prototype system not currently available. They evaluate the systems against different criteria (including ease of use, speed, and accuracy) using field experiments, laboratory experiments, and expert reviews. The results reveal the good and bad about the new systems, including specific features that contribute to clarity, confusion, or error. Going beyond the concern with spoiled ballots, they determine whether voters actually cast their ballots for the candidates they intended to support. They address fundamental questions of whether voters like and trust the equipment and whether the various systems are equally usable by all voters. Their research also opens up an entirely new line of inquiry by asking about the interaction between ballot format and voter behavior. The concluding chapter pulls together best practices that will guide manufacturers of voting systems, ballot designers, election officials, political observers, and of course, voters. In a political system based on free exercise of personal choice, the least we can do is make sure our choices are being accurately recorded and counted.

The Not-So-Simple Act of Casting a Ballot

Voting Technology

David G. Payne

In recent years there has been increasing interaction between basic and applied memory researchers, ranging from heated debates to highly productive collaborations. This collection of papers -- based on presentations at the Third Practical Aspects of Memory conference -- reviews the progress, as well as obstacles to progress, in the ongoing collaboration between basic and applied memory researchers. This volume represents the state of the art in memory research domains that straddle the basic-applied divide. The text is organized around three themes, including theoretical and metatheoretical issues concerning the interaction of basic and applied memory research, laboratory investigation of real world memory problems, and solutions of everyday problems using theoretical concepts derived from basic memory research. The first section illustrates why collaboration between basic and applied memory researchers should be beneficial and provides guidelines for avoiding some of the pitfalls. The second and third sections present some of the most significant, contemporary findings by researchers whose work is basic-yet-applicable or applied-yet-theoretically-based. Students and professional memory researchers will find the substantive results to be provocative and theoretically engaging, making the information presented in this volume invaluable. These examples of successful application will be of substantial, pragmatic value and researchers are certain to be grappling with these issues for years to come.

Intersections in Basic and Applied Memory Research

Mick P. Couper

Roger Tourangeau

The development and widespread use of Web surveys have resulted in an outpouring of research on their design. In this volume, Tourangeau, Conrad, and Couper provide a comprehensive summary and synthesis of the literature on this increasingly popular method of data collection. The book includes new integration of the authors' work with other important research on Web surveys, including a meta-analysis of studies that compare reports on sensitive topics in Web surveys with reports collected in other modes of data collection. Adopting the total survey error framework, the book examines sampling and coverage issues, nonresponse, measurement, and the issues involved in combining modes. In addition, the concluding chapter provides a model for understanding the errors in estimates that combine data collected in more than one mode. Web surveys have several important characteristics that affect their ability to collect accurate survey data. Discussing these in detail, the authors address basic design decisions from input widgets to background colors. They additionally focus on the visual character of Web surveys, on their ability to automatically interact with respondents, and on the Web as a method of self-administration. The Science of Web Surveys is relevant for those with the practical goal of improving their own surveys and those with an interest in understanding an increasingly important method of data collection.

The Science of Web Surveys

Frederick G. Conrad

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