Voting should not feel overwhelming: postal voting in Scotland versus New Jersey

If there’s an election for content best practices in postal voting, New Jersey is getting my vote over Scotland for its simplicity.

Voting in 2 countries

After nearly 10 years living in Scotland, I was finally able to vote in my first ever Scottish elections.

This is thanks to the Scottish Government passing a bill last year that allows foreign nationals living in the country to vote. Wales has also done the same.

Seeing as we’re in the middle of a pandemic, I opted for the postal vote option.

I’m well used to being a postal voter. I moved to Scotland at age 18, so I’ve always been an overseas mail-in voter for my home state of New Jersey (NJ) in the US.

Disclaimers

I can’t speak for how other states’ mail-in voter processes work. I can’t even speak for other NJ counties. So when I talk about US voting in this post, I’m really just referring to Morris County, NJ.

I’ll also note that the postal voting process in Scotland is technically different to overseas mail-in voting in the US.

Scotland posted me a ballot, and I posted it back after filling it in.

NJ emailed me my ballot, and I had to print it out, fill it in, and then mail it back.

So there is a difference between my paper-only experience for Scotland and my, let’s call it, digital-first experience for the US.

With all that in mind, it still has to be said: New Jersey is providing a better content experience when it comes to postal voting.

Here’s what Scotland is getting wrong

Too many pieces of paper that all look different in a random order

When I first opened my ballot envelope, I was incredibly overwhelmed by the 6 different pieces of papers inside.

They were all in different formats and colors, with no seemingly logical order or numbering to them.

Once I started looking at them, I got nervous I was putting them out of the order they should be in and wouldn’t remember how to put them back together.

Here is the full set of contents:

• the postal voting statement where you sign, put your date of birth, and place your ballots in the bottom half (called Envelope A)

• the two different ballots, one for constituency Member of Scottish Parliament (MSP) and one for region

• Envelope B where you place all the papers you’re posting back inside

• the postal voting step-by-step instructions

• a list of registered political parties and candidates for my region

Repeated instructions everywhere

Despite there being a step-by-step instruction sheet, pretty much every other piece of paper also gave some sort of instruction on how to vote.

I understand why you would write directions on the particular piece of paper you have to do those directions on.

For example, the ballots tell you to mark a cross (x) next to the candidate or party your want to vote for. Envelope A says to put the ballots inside and moisten the colored strip to seal it.

But the postal voting statement/Envelope A also tells you to sign your name and add your date of birth 3 different times on the same sheet of paper.

The red boxes indicate the 3 different places where there are instructions to add your date of birth and name.

Worst of all, both Envelope A and B basically repeat the entire set of step-by-step instructions, but with a different number of steps, in a different order, and saying slightly different things.

• The step-by-step guide has 8 steps. Envelope A has 6. Envelope B has 5.
• In the step-by-step guide, filling in your date of birth and signing the postal voting statement is step 1 (technically step A1). In Envelope B, it’s step 2. In Envelope B, it’s step 2 and 3, respectively.
• Envelope A doesn’t say anything about putting it inside Envelope B. Envelope B doesn’t say anything about marking a cross on the ballot sheet.

Why?! What is going on?!?!

The back of Envelope B giving you another set of instructions on how to vote.

When all these pieces of paper are telling you to do the exact same thing but in slightly different ways, you either:

• end up reading everything to make sure you’ve done what you need to, which becomes overwhelming when you keep seeing the same instructions multiple times
• or, more likely, you end up readings bits and pieces, get a feel for how it works, and just hope you haven’t missed out on a crucial bit that leads to your vote not counting

I was doing the latter before I realized that maybe I should not chance my first voting experience in Scotland.

Besides, if I read every single bit, I’d have more to complain about in a blog post I’d write later, right?

Repeated (and slightly different) getting help information

Another bonus example of repeat information. Both Envelope A and the step-by-step instructions contain getting help info.

• On Envelope A it says if you need help voting, make a mistake, or need ‘this form or guidance in Braille or languages other than English’ to call the specified helpline number.
• On the step-by-step instructions, it says if you need help voting or make a mistake to contact us using the details listed on Envelope A.

It’s annoying they’re referring you to a different piece of paper to find these instructions, but at least it’s sending you to the same contact details.

(Side note: if you did make a mistake and realize this after posting your ballot, you’ll have already sent away Envelope A which has those contact details, whereas you might have kept hold of the step-by-step sheet. So that then becomes a dead end referring you to a paper you don’t have anymore.)

• On the other hand, the step-by-step instructions say if you want the instructions ‘in another format, such as a translation into a language other than English, Braille or Audio format’, you need to contact the Returning Officer.

So call the helpline according to Envelope A, but contact the Returning Officer on the step-by-step guide to get this content in another format.

It also doesn’t say how you can contact the Returning Officer, or where to find those details.

I can’t help but feel that these specific content decisions were just a way to fill up every bit of empty space on these two pieces of paper. No regard for what it actually says, so long as it fits in the extra space.

By putting in extra content for the sake of filling out a page, it just further contributes to how overwhelming the voting process feels.

Using meaningless terms

One final point about the terms:

• ‘Envelope A’
• ‘Envelope B’

They’re meaningless, and I’m going to suggest some much better alternatives to them.

First, Envelope A doesn’t really feel like much of an envelope. You’re not meant to detach the top half of the postal voting statement from it.

So it’s more like a folded over piece of paper with a pocket you stick your ballot into. My suggested alternative: ‘ballot pocket’.

Envelope B is an actual envelope. But naming it after a letter is meaningless when this envelope has an actual function. It’s the ‘return envelope’. Call it that.

Here’s what New Jersey is getting right

Papers with numbered ordering and no frills

I was emailed 2 PDFs for the US elections.

One contained the ballot.

The other contained:

• instructions

• a cover sheet from the local election official to the mail-in voter

Most of these details are pre-filled. I’ve removed them from this picture.

• a cover sheet from the mail-in voter to the local election official

Most of these details are pre-filled. I’ve removed them from this picture.

• a waiver to sign away your rights to a secret ballot

The best part about the US election materials: no one was caring about aesthetics here. It’s a document serving a function.

The 2nd PDF was plain white letter-size paper listing the instructions in Times New Roman.

Nothing to distract me or overwhelm me.

It also has numbering. Sure, the advantage of the PDF is I can always refer to it to see the order stuff is in, but I still had to print these pages out.

The numbers at the bottom of each page meant I could keep my printed copies in order, and I readily knew where to go when some of the instructions referred to different pages numbers.

Non-repetitive instructions

There are technically two sets of instructions, but they say different things.

The main instruction sheet talks you through the process of how you both complete an email and mail-in ballot (you can email a ballot in for election day, but it’s okay if your mail-in ballot arrives later).

It says to mark your ballot, but it doesn’t say how.

Only the ballot itself contains the instruction on how to actually mark up the ballot. No duplication!

(I’ll note that step 4 in the ballot instructions does give directions on how to return your ballot, but this looks like it’s probably only for overseas military voters. It talks about putting your ballots in an inner envelope and return envelope. I had to provide my own envelope. So step 4 could be improved by stating ‘if applicable’ or similar. )

Vertically-aligned instructions

Another great part about both sets of instructions: vertical alignment of the steps. This helps you easily scan down the instructions.

Main instruction sheet.

Ballot instructions.

The Scottish step-by-step instructions being horizontally aligned and all the boxes for each step being different sizes makes it harder to read.

Clear instructions

I find that the US instructions are both easy to follow and they answer all the questions I have.

For example:

• There are two pages called ‘cover sheet’ in the 2nd PDF, but it tells me it’s only the one labeled page number 3 that I have to scan back.
• For emailing my ballot it tells me what equipment and materials I need: ‘a scanner, a printer and the ability to print on any standard sized paper’. (For the 2016 and 2018 elections, this step used to say 8.5" x 11" paper, so I guess they realized the rest of the world uses A4.)
• It tells me if I have a question to contact the Election Official and where to find their contact details. No telling me who to contact but not how to contact them like in the Returning Officer example for Scotland.

Meaningful terms

In a complete contrast to the Scottish experience, the US ballot has meaningful terminology for envelope names.

As stated above, these envelopes weren’t actually part of my voting experience, but they are worth calling attention to. ‘Inner envelope’ and ‘return envelope’ make a lot more sense than ‘Envelope A’ and ‘Envelope B’.

I also like how the materials refer to the ‘Election Official’. The election official’s actual job title is ‘Country Clerk’, but the instructions avoid this term.

This is a good example of using a term that’s more familiar to your users over jargon.

…but it was free to vote in Scotland

All in all, I preferred the NJ experience from a content perspective.

From a financial perspective, though, I got to send my Scottish postal vote back at no cost to me.

For US elections, I have to go to the post office and pay to send my ballot overseas to NJ.

NJ doesn’t have to require that, though; some states just let you email back a scanned copy of your ballot only and call it a day.

So financial points to Scotland, content points to NJ.

At the end of the day, though, I can vote both in the place I’m from and the place I live, and that’s the best user experience of all.

Me posting my first Scottish election ballot.