I haven't seen this in any of these so-called election reform bills:

[Bill Bored]

Has anyone seen any language prohibiting ballot designs such as the FL Butterfly or the Ohio Caterpillar?

These designs invite fraud by facilitating vote switching, undervotes and overvotes. I'm not going into the details here, but OpScans are not immune to this problem, even though they use paper ballots.

I know there has to be rotation of ballot orders in some states such as Ohio, but this should be done in such a way so as to minimize the possibility of fraud. I.e., PROHIBIT the use of ballot order rotations that allow switching of votes between major candidates, such as Bush and Kerry.

I haven't seen any proposed regulations for ballot designs other than perhaps absentees and provisionals.

[Wilms]

1. I haven't seen any. And it seems a good point that you raise. n/t

[Cocoa]

2. ask Dodd to add it to S17

national standards for ballot design sounds like a good idea.

[Bill Bored]

3. With that bill, there won't be any paper ballots to design, will there?

Only an option for paper verification with no requirement for anyone to actually use it. It will be hard enough to get them to make paper the ballot of record in that bill, much less a specific style of paper ballot.

I guess it could be included, but first thing's first, which is to make the paper ballot the ballot of record in the event of any discrepancies.