Don Moynihan Profile picture
Feb 15 6 tweets 2 min read
This seems like a prime example of where forms either did not consider how people interact with mailers, or worse, did do so.
Here is the full context from the AL Secretary of State. My question is, did he do any testing of the mailer with actual people? Its possible this is just poorly designed, but its cheap and easy to test different options.
A lot of the time people ignore mail. With mail from government they still might not read everything, but skip to where they are being directed to do something (the big arrow canceling their registration in this case). Real potential for voter error here. Image
Let's assume the goal is not to induce voter error here.
There is a community that studies human centered design and administrative burden. If your goal is to get people to accurately engage with these administrative processes, maybe draw upon that expertise.
Honestly, you don't really need to be an expert to see how this form would result in error. A bit of common sense would suffice. Governments have a legitimate effort in keeping the rolls current, but not in inducing voters to cancel their own registration

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More from @donmoyn

Feb 16
My normal tag-line for this sort of thing is "the commanding heights of universities are actually conservative places" but honestly, there is nothing conservative about this.
Doesn't seem like too much to ask that the leaders of American higher education institutions support American democracy ajc.com/education/geor…
If you think Purdue participating in a Stop the Steal rally is not disqualifying for a higher ed position, he also made clear in his job as Secretary of Agriculture that he was perfectly willing to punish researchers whose views did not align with his.
Read 7 tweets
Feb 15
It's essential to look not just at the text of such laws, but also the environment they are creating. Policy implementation varies by environment, and in contexts where policymakers and key stakeholders are determined to use these laws to censorious ends, they will succeed.
New laws are also changing the environment, By putting in statute the complaints of extremist groups they legitimize and set up a permission structure of intimidation. reuters.com/investigates/s…
Thus, part of the environment becomes how much do school officials want to risk publicly pushing back against extremists seeking to get them fired, or who will protest at their home, or threaten their family. donmoynihan.substack.com/p/making-publi…

Read 6 tweets
Feb 14
New from me: early signs from Texas suggest that its new voting laws will be disastrous for vote-by-mail, leading to a significant increase in spoiled ballots. Some counties are rejecting 25-40% of ballots.

What are the broader lessons? 🧵donmoynihan.substack.com/p/how-to-think…
A savvy take about new voting laws is that the actually won't change much, based on analyses of previous election laws. See, e.g. this piece from Nate Cohn (which cited my work!)

But I think that view may be the wrong way to think about such laws. 2/ nytimes.com/2021/04/03/ups…
Just normatively, we should not condition access to the right to vote on anticipated partisan effects on turnout. But empirically, I am not sure we know as much as we think we do about how the new laws will work for a few reasons. 3/ donmoynihan.substack.com/p/how-to-think…
Read 7 tweets
Feb 14
Countdown to the half-time show backlash begins now.
It will take them a while to figure out what they are outraged about, but don't worry, they will get there
Not much to say about this beyond observing that performative outrage and aggrieved victimhood about stuff that doesn’t actually affect them is assumed to be a central feature of getting ahead in MAGAworld
Read 4 tweets
Feb 12
New Texas voting laws are seeing 25-40% of mail ballots rejected in some counties. Predictable outcome of new administrative burdens leading to disenfranchisement. 1/
washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/…
If you add novel and unexpected requirements to the voting process - asking people to write down their social security number or a special TX id number with the ballot - some people will miss them. 2/ Image
At a polling place, a pollworker might be able to help you fix this oversight. But with mail voting, they have to contact you, get you a new ballot or ask you to come in. Again, this increases the cost of voting, and makes it more likely some will not vote. 3/ Image
Read 8 tweets
Feb 4
I wrote about the effort to both-sides current threats to American democracy, focusing on Ross Douthat's claim that liberal belief in expertise is akin to right-wing populism. 1/
donmoynihan.substack.com/p/at-least-its…
Douthat's core argument is summarized below: right-wing populism is democratic in ways that liberalism is not. This is, I think both wrong and misleading. It understands the anti-democratic nature of populism and the value of expertise to successful democratic societies. 2/
Douthat picks three examples of how expertise is at odds with democracy, all of which fail in some fundamental way. First, libs want you to listen to Anthony Fauci and public health guidelines. Well...3/ donmoynihan.substack.com/p/at-least-its…
Read 9 tweets

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