get donkey!

I voted this morning using Harris County’s new eSlate system. I was skeptical about the design of this thing. I thought a touch screen would be more intuitive than the wheel-thingie on the eSlate, but I have to admit I liked voting with this thing. The first thing you have to do on the eSlate is enter your authorization number (provided by a poll worker), and that actually serves as a quick tutorial on how to use the system. What I really liked was that you had to select the candidate you wanted first and then hit the “enter” button to place your vote. Though this may be a mild discomfort from a usability standpoint, it is actually a good thing in something like voting because it causes you to look at the screen and make sure you have selected the correct candidate before you hit the “enter” key. With the touch screen, it would be much easier to fat-finger the wrong candidate and more difficult to change your vote (you would probably have to employ buttons that you weren’t already familiar with using).

I had 2 problems with the eSlate, however. First, the paging was not consistent. On some screens, the ballot advanced automatically, and on some you had to hit the “next” key to get to the next screen. I almost thought I was finished when I got to the end of page 3 until I looked up and saw that it was page 3 of 10. Also there was a heading for the HISD school bond referendum on page 9, but you actually had to page ahead to page 10 to cast your vote. I suspect that this had more to do with how the ballot was programmed into the machine than the machine itself. It would be nice if the screen had said something like, “Please press “Next” to advance to the next screen”.

The second problem was type size. At the end of the voting before you hit the “Cast” button, you are presented with a screen to review your choices. Here the text was too small and the font was inconsistent. I had no problem reading it, but I could easily see how some people may have difficulty. At any rate, at least you had an option to check your choices before you finally cast the ballot.

In all, I liked the eSlate much better than the old pushpin ballot. Although I am not sure the lady next to me felt the same way. She said she hated computers and needed help. She asked me to help her, but I wasn’t sure if it was legal for me to help her (is it?), so I flagged down an official and he was able to help her out.

In other news, there were a good number of people at the poll at 7:30 AM. There were only two people in line front of me, but every one of the ten voting booths were consistently full, and people were steadily flowing into the polling place as I left.

If you haven’t voted already make sure you go do it!

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