Thursday, 24 April 2008
EU parliament voting system
Since I have a course on UI design this semester, with focus on very simple interfaces for embedded systems, I found these articles on Politiken quite interesting. Apparently, the case is, that members of the EU parliament by accident voted against what they wanted to vote, because they pushed the wrong button.
N.Y.Times, feb. 15, 1920, electronic
voting is not a new concept.
I tried to search little on the net to find out what kind of voting system it is they have there in detail, but it was not so easy to figure. I guess I have to go there once to see for myself how it works and how the UI excactly is. From what I can find about the MEP voting system and their Electronic voting rules, is that:
- Electronic votes is the last option, where show of hands is the first
- There are three buttons: For, Against, and Abstaining
- The buttons are embedded in the desk
- There is an electronic board where you can see results
- MEPs have to identify with some kind of electronic card
- There are two "modes" of voting, one counts only numbers, another "roll call" records what each MEP vote, the recording is not done by the electronic system
- It will be an "anonymous" vote if only numbers are counted
Since the articles mention that voters are known, I guess it means that they voted electronically, but also that their names were registered by "roll call". Already this suggests that it is not a "UI problem" with the electronic voting system, but rather, well, they voted how they wanted to vote :-). (I'm not into politics, but Engelbreth's blog kind of coins the issue)
However, if someone had pictures of the actual voting system there, it could be interesting to conduct a study on features such as:
- Coloring and labeling of buttons. Eg. a uniform color and too small labels could speak in favor of accidental votes.
- Placement and size of buttons. Too close by each other, or size is different.
- Environment around the setup, is it comfortable, is there enough space to the neighbouring table, so other members cannot lurk on you? This contradicts that it has to be easy to distinguish the buttons.
- Do the displays show "live" votes or only results after voting has closed? I guess it has to be only final results, but surely live results could have maybe triggered more to "dare" to wrote For in this case.
Anyway, its an interesting field, and I hope I get the chance to go there some day, atleast just to see, not nessecarily to change anything (some can argue that EU in general does not change anything, but I better not say that, they could have impact on university fundings :) ).
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