快猫短视频

THE controversial butterfly ballot used in the US presidential elections in
Palm Beach County hasn鈥檛 just confused Florida voters, it鈥檚 confused a
significant number of people in a scientific survey, Canadian researchers
say.

鈥淭he ballot is biased. It causes systematic errors,鈥� says Robert Sinclair at
the University of Alberta in Edmonton.

Backers of Democrat candidate Al Gore claim the ballot鈥檚 design, which placed
punched holes between lists of candidates鈥� names, led thousands of Gore voters
to accidentally vote for fringe candidate Pat Buchanan. If true, then those
votes handed the knife-edge election to Republican George W. Bush.

Sinclair and colleagues checked the design by putting Canadian candidates
onto butterfly ballot papers, with the home-grown politicians replacing Bush,
Gore and Buchanan.

They then asked 116 random shoppers to vote. Four of the people using the
butterfly ballot made errors, and three of those were the equivalent of a
erroneous vote for Buchanan rather than Gore. Although the sample size was
small, the error rate is statistically significant, the researchers say.

鈥淚t astonishes me that nobody did this study before the election,鈥� says
Sinclair. He points out that his study, which could have highlighted errors in
the ballot鈥檚 design and averted the controversy, cost less than C$50 to
complete.