Possible use of Python for a voting machine demo project -- your feedback requested

[Ian Bicking]

On Sun, 2003-07-20 at 18:53, Alan Dechert wrote:
> "Andrew Dalke" <adalke at mindspring.com> wrote in message
> news:bff56e$8iv$1 at slb9.atl.mindspring.net...
> > Alan Dechert:
> > > will change.  For example, when the voter selects a president/vice
> > president
> > > pair, the background will change; the non-selected pairs will be greyed
> > > while the selected pair will be highlighted (very brightly -- should
> light
> >
> > "greyed" in normal UI parlance means the option is no longer selected.
> > What happens if someone pressed the wrong button?  How is the correct
> > selection made?
> >
> Point (or click on) again to de-select.  This is one thing that may require
> a little voter training. I think it's easy enough, but then we'll find out.
> You could add a "reset" button but that would make an already busy screen
> even busier.  I'm not sure if that would be easier.

I think it would make more sense not to change the display of the
unselected candidates, but only to highlight the selected candidate.

The more you reduce the amount of color used elsewhere in the display,
the more color in a selection will stand out.  At least for people who
aren't completely color-blind -- but those people will just have to pay
slightly more attention.  I think font changes might confuse people. 
Thickening the border of the selected candidate would not.

If you have a dense ballot like you are proposing I would expect even an
experienced user would be likely to make one mistake somewhere, so it
should be clear how to fix it.

> > > 3) When "WRITE-IN CANDIDATE" is selected, a large widow (maybe the full
> > > screen) will pop up with a QWERTY keyboard in the upper half.  This
> > keyboard
> > > will have only three rows with the alpha keys (no punctuation or numbers
> > > needed except for perhaps the hyphen... no shift, all CAPS).
> >
> > No apostrophe?  What if I want to vote for "O'Reilly"
> >
> As a matter of fact, we won't let you vote for O'Reilly.  On second thought,
> you're right, I guess.  Okay we'll have an apostrophe available.  Anything
> else?

Also a hyphen, like for Mercuri-Neumann.  I assume it would be
acceptable to simply leave off any accent marks, umlauts, tildes, etc.
from a candidate's name (at least in the US), even though strictly
speaking an "n~" (excuse my uninternationalized keyboard) isn't the same
letter as an "n"... but no one will be confused by that, which is more
important than correctness.  However, whether Mercuri-Neumann becomes
MERCURINEUMANN or MERCURI NEUMANN would confuse and distress people
(even if those were likely to be counted as the same by the system).  

  Ian