I was rather surprised by the poor design of the ballots as I voted yesterday. It took me a couple seconds to figure out what to do, and I actually had to read the instructions. I found the ballot overly-complicated, in part due to the number of languages that were squashed onto the same page. And to select a candidate, I had to draw a line connecting the head of an arrow with its tail, which was a manner of indicating a selection that I'd never seen before in any type of voting or test-taking. After seeing the controversial ballot in Palm Beach, I wonder: who designs these ballots? This is, perhaps, some of the most important information architecture work to be had. Do they perform user testing on the ballot designs before election day? I can't imagine that the Palm Beach design would have passed. It's hard to believe Gore could lose the election over some bad UI in Florida.