AIGA fixed confusing ballots by bringing in typographers

In the 2000 US presidential election, Palm Beach County's infamous 'butterfly ballot' laid out candidate names and punch holes so confusingly that thousands of voters, by later analysis, punched a hole for a different candidate than they intended — a design failure with real consequences in one of the closest elections in American history. The institutions responsible for ballots, county election boards and election law offices, had no graphic design training and no established process for catching a layout problem like this before it caused real votes to be miscounted.

The American Institute of Graphic Arts (AIGA), a professional graphic design association, saw an entirely different diagnosis than the legal and procedural fixes being debated in the election's aftermath: ballots and election materials were fundamentally an information-design problem — layout, typography, visual hierarchy — that the design profession, not election administrators alone, was best equipped to solve.

Brought graphic designers into election offices to redesign ballots with clearer type and grouping, fixing the root cause instead of adding procedural fixes.

Designers diagnosed the root cause: poor layout, not legal ambiguity.

Redesigned ballots with clear type and visual grouping reduced voter errors.

Institutional openness allowed designers to work with election officials.

The success spread, influencing national ballot design guidance.

When users fail due to confusing layout, bring in design experts, not just policy or legal fixes.

The Cook County redesign measurably reduced the number of voters who failed to successfully cast a vote on the crowded judicial retention ballot, and Lausen's design principles remained in use across Cook County elections for years afterward. AIGA's Design for Democracy resources and ballot-design guidelines were subsequently adopted by multiple state and county election offices beyond Illinois as reference standards for clear ballot design.