Dare I say the Dade County ballot is confusing?

Old people find everything confusing.

Sore subject. I spent an hour on the phone today with my mom, trying to explain how to plug the ethernet cable from her modem into her computer.

^^My girlfriend was in her 50’s when it was Gore V Bush. That isn’t old. Now she is in her early 60’s. Still not very old. I don’t know how old the woman who screwed it up is.

Doesn’t matter. Older people vote! It shouldn’t be confusing.

I’m in Florida, in Hillsborough county.

We had a three page ballot.

We’ve gotten countless notices that vote by mail ballots were available.

We got a sample ballot to read ahead of time in the mail.

The ballot is available online to read.

It’s not like they were hiding anything, except from people too lazy to care.

I can’t find a sample ballot on the net. Here is the August primary ballot for Miami-Dade. It is a bit daunting at first and if the voter is feeling pressure to hurry up because of the people behind them, they could easily make a mistake or miss something. Take a look. Each question is color coded by language. I understand that they are trying to be fair to everyone, but why isn’t the basic, most important issue on the front page: inre the contest between the primary candidates for president? I suspect more Florida election bullshit. It’s been going on since the twenties.

PDF link for the general ballot below. Though to save you the click, I can say it looks pretty much exactly like the ballot @Espiritus_Corvus‘s linked above.

Yes, the tri-lingual headings are confusing. That is a bad choice.

Also I have never seen Haitian Creole before, that’s interesting. At first I thought it was an Eastern European language with all the Ks.

PDF Dade County Official Sample Ballot General Election Tuesday, November 8, 2016

Yo ta te fè pi bon yo mete yon tit fè nwa nan chwa ki genyen yo pou prezidan tankou yo te fè pou tout kategori ki ka vote ak lòt. Mwen ka wè ki jan yon moun ta misstake vòt la pou prezidan pou direksyon pou vote – ki pi fò moun inyore. Mwen definitivman sispèk finagling. Tipik gouvènman Florid.

They would have done better to put a dark heading at the choices for president like they did for all the other voting categories. I can see how someone would misstake the vote for president for voting directions—which most people ignore. Given the history, I definitely suspect finagling. Typical Florida government.

Thanks, @Call_Me_Jay

@Seek They always have sample ballot as far as I know. I bet they had a sample ballot during the hanging chad fiasco. That wasn’t just about the type of ballot, it was also about how it was easy to mistakenly vote for the wrong person.

Personally, I don’t see how she missed voting for president, unless maybe her candidate wasn’t on the ballot. McCullen isn’t on the FL ballot. That’s all I can guess as a possible alternative explanation.

The ballot is very wordy. It probably would have been better to just make up three separate ballots.

@Call_me_Jay Yeah, I don’t know how long Dade has put Creole on the ballot, but I can tell you that for at least 20 years when hurricanes are coming the governor puts out warning and information in Creole, and I would guess for years they can do the driver’s license in Creole. That last part is a guess, but I can’t imagine it hasn’t been available a long time. My MIL did her driver’s in Spanish over 20 years ago. When I was a realtor many of the contracts could be done in Spanish, but I don’t think they had Creole at that time.

Los Angeles had ballots in a dozen languages when I voted there, but they were separate, not crammed on to one page.

How is that sample ballot at all hard to read?

Anyway, the problem with making three separate ballots is that you get a lot of people who ask for Spanish language ballots (or whatever language) passed a “Provisional ballot” that will never be counted by some shyster poll worker.

And before you say it doesn’t happen, it fucking does.