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# Re: Anoka County Ballot shading

- To: <rcr@dieboldes.com>
- Subject: Re: Anoka County Ballot shading
- From: "Ian Piper" <ian@dieboldes.com>
- Date: Mon, 17 Jan 2000 16:44:40 -0600
- References: <NCBBIGGNCKBDKCCGPEOACECNDCAA.ken@dieboldes.com>

How thick are we talking here? Are these thick lines and text for blind people? Are they state requirements?
Thick race boundaries and text next to the timing marks can reduce the image we see on the timing marks if a ballot left or right shifts. Thick race boundaries and text next to voting ovals can affect scanning of voting marks, i.e., increase in invalid marks.
0.020 inches has always been the max for race boundaries and those has been shifted left or right on the ballot image away from the voting positions to respect the 0.250 inch boundary on the voting position.
If it's a must here are some suggestions.
Place any thick black line or text at least 1/2 a voting column clear away from any timing mark, voting position, diagnostic mark, or ID mark, then the reader wouldn't care how thick you made those black lines and text. But then you drastically reduce the available area for race and candidate text. Kind of a rock and a hard place situation.
Sacrifice candidate text space and you can have thick black lines and text.
Sacrifice thick black lines and text and you can have more available candidate text space.
Sacrifice neither and you can have increased ballot rejection rates.
We could go the multi-color route. Print the race boundaries and text in an reader-invisible color (Pantone 130U or Pantone 032U) and then you can print any thickness you want, but it would have to be on white paper stock. Colored paper stock would affect the ink color.
Or we could throw caution to the wind, and let any body do anything they want on the ballots, and then let the chips fall where they may. But that's not a constructive suggestion.
If there are any other ideas, please feel free to comment. I've already got dibs on the "design a new optical scan system" idea. So come up with something else more creative.
Ian

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Ken Clark
> To: rcr@dieboldes.com
> Sent: Monday, January 17, 2000 2:53 PM
> Subject: RE: Anoka County Ballot shading
> Okay, it looks like background shading, color, reverse text, and thick lines are here to stay.
> To each of the rich text editors (vgroup, race, candidate, header) we will add a background color selection (including grayscale) and a foreground color selection. We can support a background color for each of the text blocks, but we still won't be able to on a word-by-word basis (because of limitations in our RTF control). This should work well for Anoka and similar. A windows metafile will still need to be used for reverse "PROPOSITION" text headings when the rest of the prop text is plain though. The background and color features will work well for the AVTS as well.
> The thick line portion of this RCR was also brought up recently by Jeff in his "Gems - Creating columns on the ballot" RCR. Two requests makes quorum, so we'll see what we can do about that too. GEMS 1.15 now allows users to select top, bottom, left, and right lines around the race box. We used to only control top/bottom and left/right as a pair. We can't control the line thickness as a global since Anoka only wants the left line to be thick. I guess that means four drop down boxes with line widths instead of four check marks. Straightforward enough.
> We don't have a timeframe for implementing this right now, but it is not too huge an undertaking. I know these features are desired in other accounts for other reasons. We are on top of primary printing season now, but we could have something ready for the next printing window. Let us know what kind of pressure we are talking about here, and we'll get it done accordingly.
> Ken
> Welcome to Bloatsville. Population: GEMS

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