This post appeared in a previous blog and is here for posterity’s sake.
So I have updated the election 2004 candidate voting guide for zip code 11222, greenpoint brooklyn, ny with more information thanks to Patrick. It seems that the google search for brooklyn voting guide comes up second only to an about.com site which is totally useless but persists in the #1 site only because the amount of linkage inside the about.com crapspace.
I also want to note how crappy the Board of Elections in New York City website is. There is no candidate list outside of a crappily formatted .pdf which you have to almost guess which districts you are in and which races you can vote for. Why is it so hard to design usable interfaces when dealing with elections? Just look at the butterfly ballot or computer voting machines or the NYC BoE website; all are examples of bad design that can literally change the world. I am sure most of the bad design decisions are not of malicious nature; but not correcting the problem is. Each Board of Elections needs to have volunteers trained in design to assit when designing anything relating to an user interface: from ballots to fliers to websites. Why a country which gobbles up “designed” items such as the iMac, Volkswagon Beetle, and IKEA doesn’t storm the gates when it comes to bad design when it actually matters, is beyond me.
Ditto most of your observations re: websites and election info. It didn’t take me an hour to figure out which district I’m in, but it took less than five minutes for me to figure out what a pain in the neck the government websites can be. And the utter paucity of practical — even basic — information on candidates in the smaller races is enough to make me nauseous. Anyway, your voter guide told me what even the government website failed to mention: the judical vote. It makes me pine for the days of Ben Franklin and broadsides written under pseudonyms.