Canadian Study Claims Butterfly Ballot is Flawed

Nov. 30 -- Voters have complained they’re confusing. Lawyers have argued it in court. Now a Canadian scientist is publishing a study to try and prove the infamous “butterfly ballot” leads to errors.

“The morning after the election I was drinking my coffee and watching TV when they flashed an image of the butterfly ballot,” says Robert Sinclair, a Canadian psychologist at the University of Alberta. “I saw right away there was a serious design problem.”

Creating Canadian Equivalent

Since the Canadian elections were only 20 days away, Sinclair called his former graduate adviser, Melvin Mark, a psychologist at Pennsylvania State University, and the two designed a quick study. They decided to poll Canadians on their preferences among the candidates for Prime Minister using ballots with single columns and others with the two-column design.

His results, which will be published next Thursday in the journal Nature, show that more than 7.5 percent of those using a ballot designed like the so-called butterfly ballot, intended to vote for one candidate, but mistakenly voted for another.

The study addresses alleged problems in the two-column butterfly ballot which was used in Palm Beach County, Florida. More than 19,000 ballots in the Florida county were thrown out when machines determined that voters had marked votes for two candidates. Others have argued that Reform Party Candidate Pat Buchanan received a disproportionately high number of votes in the county because of the ballots.

To tailor his test ballot for Canadians, Sinclair listed the candidates, Stockwell Day and Jean Chretien, from Canada’s two dominant parties, at the top of the ballot in the left column. Their locations corresponded to the placement of Governor George W. Bush’s and Vice President Al Gore’s names on the Palm Beach ballot.

On the right, Sinclair listed candidates from lesser-known parties, including candidate Joe Clark, at the top of the right column, corresponding to the place where Buchanan’s name appeared on the Palm Beach County ballot.