19 posts in "Tag: plain language"
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Ballot questions are hard to understand. Here are 6 ways to fix them.
Ballot questions give voters an opportunity to have a say in the way their government functions. But all too often, voters feel confused when they encounter...
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If a legal right is not readable, is it really a right?
Too often, good legal rights are obscured by legal text written for lawyers. That made us think: if the people who need this information can’t...
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Attention-grabbing style: typography to grab (and hold) your reader’s attention
Typography can help - or hurt - your desire to convey important information to voters. We reviewed the available research on 4 typography choices. Here's...
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3 strategies to improve vote-by-mail signature forms
3 strategies to simplify signature forms and create a more successful experience voting by mail.
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An invitation to redistricting
What happens when citizens lead the design of an application for their own effort to redraw district lines.
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A month of presentations
A month of sharing what we've learned about civic design with election officials and UX designers
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Instructions on vote-by-mail ballots build confidence in Arapahoe County
How can good voter instructions reduce the workload of election judges during election season? In Arapahoe County, Colorado, the right...
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Writing election information that everyone can read
The key to effective information for voters with low literacy is plain language and plain interaction.
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A Voter Bill of Rights in plain language for California
When we started to work on a project to improve voter guides in California, we did not expect the Voter...
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Helping voters get the right primary election ballot in California
Primaries are hard to explain. But writing instructions for voters gets even harder when some parties allow some voters to participate in their Presidential...
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Less can be more in official notices
Tips to make notices, forms, and letters easier for voters to read.
Field Guides
Writing instructions voters understand
It’s amazing the difference simple language can make for voters. In research conducted for the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST),...
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Listening to voters
Helping citizens feel included in civic life by listening to voters (Article in Civic Quarterly)
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Absentee ballot instructions in Minnesota
In 2008, the election for Senator from Minnesota between Al Franken and Norm Coleman was decided only after a lengthy...
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Election vocabulary voters don’t get — and what to do about it
Our research and that of others who study people with low literacy and reading disabilities tell us that simplicity rules.
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