So, another three years has come around and it was time to choose between Biggie Smallstick and Burst Watermain. In Australia, voting is compulsory – you get fined by the Australian Electoral Commission if you don’t vote – and it would be reasonable to assume that because voting is mandatory, the processes to do so would be streamlined, simple and frictionless.

Hahahaha! Silly Australians. (props, Sammy J).

Firstly, you have to vote in person. While electronic voting has its detractors, this is 2016, and quite frankly, we should have figured it out by now. Maybe it would make referenda on things like equal marriage and becoming a republic too easy and less costly? Who knows. Maybe we need a strong and robust national broadband network to make it work. Whatever, you can’t currently vote online.

You can however do an early vote, in person or by post. This requires pre-registration, and there are rules around who can early vote. Sigh. Too hard. Just easier to nip across the two blocks to the Senior Citizens Centre, where I’ve voted dozens of times before, wait in line for a little while, get a #democracysausage, and even take the doggie for a walk.

Nope.

Even though I’ve voted at the local Senior Citizens Centre dozens of times before, it’s not actually a polling place for the 2016 Federal Election. So, after taking the doggie for walkies on our usual route, which passes by the Senior Citizens Centre, I was surprised to find no AEC signage or personnel there, and no party volunteers. “Perhaps it’s not a polling place this year” I wondered, “I’m sure they will have signposted it if that’s the case”.

Silly Kathy.

There was no signage around at all, and two other ladies walked up to the centre as well. We chatted, and they patted the doggie, and I used my mobile device (Nexus 5X, vanilla Android 6.01) to attempt to solve the problem.

My first approach these days is just to ask Google. So, using Google Now, I asked “Where can I vote today?”.  Google Now helpfully responded with this list of options.

Now, ‘nearest polling place’ sounds like pretty helpful information, right?

Silly Kathy.

Clicking this (sponsored) link took me to the AEC website, which had lots of information on voting types, and how to vote, but not the actual information I was looking for – where I could actually vote. At least it was responsive and showed up on a mobile phone. Not a high barrier, admittedly, but one that all to many websites fail on these days.

Hot tip: If you’re going to use sponsored Google Adwords, please for the love of all that is good in the world, make sure the URL goes to the specific, actual information that you’re promoting.

Also helpfully, Google Now had provided an Australian Federal Election tile. Could this help me, where the website of the government agency actually responsible for elections had not? Let’s find out!

First, I clicked on the tile. Props to Google Now for knowing that today was an election, and that I was geographically in Australia. So far, so good. Next, I had to search for the electorate I was in, which was a little clunky. I already share both Wi-Fi and GPS location data with Google Now, so from a UX viewpoint it would have been preferable to automatically show the information for the electorate that I was physically in first. But still, much better than the AEC experience.

Then, I had to scroll down a bit to find the actual location information. A handy skip link to locations would have been nice, but still, I could find the information I needed, in the context I needed it, without too much hassle.

For bonus points, the location information linked straight to Google Maps, and also pulled in data from Election Sausage Sizzle (aka Democracy Sausage). Glorious. Thank you, Google. AEC, take notes.

See the full Google election site at https://election.google.com.au

Once I got to my destination, the UX experience continued. There was a banner on the TAFE, where I was voting, but there were no sandwich boards on the pavement or other visual indicators. Really, you could have easily missed that it was a polling place.

Given that I had my doggie with me, there were also few places to securely leave him, and I was grateful for one of the party volunteers, who offered to mind him. He liked her, so I trusted her. Dogs are good judges of character.

The other observation here was that there were few facilities for people – particularly the elderly or less mobile, to sit down. I walked in with a lady who had a limp, and she was clearly in some pain. Somewhere to sit for her would have made it an easier experience.  Sadly, no Democracy Sausage or Democracy Cake, and they would have made a tidy profit – as it was cold and chilly.

The line to vote was thankfully short (I got there just on 0800rs as voting opened), and I waited about 3min 45 seconds to go in and vote (yes, I measured). Once I had my name checked off (painless, the chap had clearly done this several times, he found my name with military precision. He looked like a Menzies fan), there was light at the end of the tunnel. But then I saw it. A donkey voter’s delight.

IT WAS THE SENATE BALLOT PAPER FROM HELL

Measuring up at over a metre long, I couldn’t get this thing into the polling booth without folding it in half. Normally a below-the-line voter, there was no way I could wrestle with this. I admitted defeat, and dutifully pencilled in 1-6 above the line. The poor AEC election official had to stifle laughter as I attempted origami to fold the bloody thing six times to make it fit into the ballot box. No points, would not buy again.

The ballot paper experience actually changed the way I vote, and this is bad for democracy.

On a side note, the election booth actually contained a magnifying sheet for those hard of sight. Admittedly, it would take you an hour to read the Senate Ballot Paper From Hell with the magnifying sheet. But yes, I will concede half a point here for usability.

So, how was my voting experience, or #votex? It sucked. But it would have sucked more if I wasn’t able bodied, didn’t have an Android mobile phone and didn’t have a very clear idea of who I was voting for, enabling me to quickly go from below the line to above the line. If voting is mandatory, we have to make it easier for people. I’m digitally savvy. I’m able bodied. I’m politically astute. And this experience sucked for me. Dammit, I’m an election power user AND IT SUCKED. How on earth does Average Voter Joe feel about this process? No wonder people see their democratic rights as a chore and not a privilege. Australia, we’ve made exercising our democratic rights difficult, clumsy and off-putting.

Making #votex easier for citizens

So, how do we fix it?

• Electronic voting – we need to find a way to do it reliably, securely, and in a way that all citizens can access
• If your polling places change from year to year, find a way to let people know. Put a poster on the window of the Senior Citizens’ Centre! Let people set their preferred polling places, so that if their preferred polling place changes, you can notify them and direct them appropriately.
• UX your website and if you have link that says ‘Click here to find out where to vote’, make sure you take the user to information that tells them where they can vote. It’s not rocket surgery.
• Fix the senate. Or, failing that, design a ballot paper that isn’t twice the width of the ballot booth.
• Real time queuing information. That could then be released as open data, so we can do predictive analytics on it for future years. Integrate this with the mobile app.

Democracy. Let’s make it suck less.