Online voter education about voting systems: the envelope please!

At this time of year, when there are many elections going on around the nation, we often see many different examples of efforts by election jurisdictions to inform voters about how to use their voting technologies. Here are three online video examples.

The first is from Los Angeles County, California, showing how to use their early voting equipment (Diebold Accuvote). This is short and simple, and has some really jazzy tunes associated with it.

The second is from Orange County, California. It is a relatively lengthy video demonstration of their Hart eSlate voting system. Note the very cool Orange County scenes at the beginning of the demonstration video!

The third is from New York City, demonstrating how to use their lever voting machines. This one is dark and a bit antiquated, and has some interesting narration.

It would be a great research project, if someone were to download and archive these video presentations, and then do analysis of them to determine which are more effective at educating voters how to use voting technologies, and to then see if we could develop best practices for these educational tools. Undoubtedly, voters will be increasingly turning to presentations like these to learn more about the voting technologies they use on election day, which means that we really do need to strive to develop and utilize the most informative and usable online voter education tools possible.

If readers have other examples and favorites, please pass them along. We certainly appreciate examples at either extreme!