"You can choose from N ballot options" number is wrong?

[chris48s]

I'm not really sure what this number is trying to tell me. I guess it is either supposed to be either:

• The total number of things (people or parties) that will be on the ballot paper or
• The number of those things (people or parties) that I can vote for in some way

but the number doesn't correspond to either of those things. For example:

This is a Supplementary Vote ballot with 6 people standing. I can vote for 2 of them (first and second preference):

---

This is a PR ballot with 14 total things standing (13 parties plus one independent candidate). I can vote for one of them:

Not sure if the feature is broken or working and I don't understand what it is trying to tell me. If its the second one, I suspect it is unclear to others too and this could be phrased more clearly.

[symroe]

I think we might have fixed this already, but not deployed it yet. Can you check on https://test.whocanivotefor.co.uk and confirm if it's improved?

[chris48s]

Yes - that does appear to be fixed now and more clearly phrased 👍

This definitely shouldn't be a blocker to deploying that because it is a big improvement but...

The one further minor suggestion I would have is: On party list elections the caption is something like "You will have one vote, and can choose from 10 candidates ", whereas actually you've got way more candidates standing than that. That's the number of [parties or people]. Obviously this is difficult because parties can field a list and independents can also stand too so you've got 10.. things there isn't a single nice word for, but it would probably be clearer to say "You will have one vote, and can choose from 10 parties" (accepting that in some case that means 10 parties and in some cases it means 8 parties and 2 independents, or whatever). I think that would be a better explanation and a fairly simple change to make.

The really nice solution would be to actually present that as "You will have one vote, and can choose from 8 parties and 2 independent candidates" or whatever where that is the case (which you do have the data for), but y'know.. priorities :)

[sjorford]

This may be a stupid question, but what wording does the ballot paper use?

[chris48s]

Definitely not a stupid question - I had not thought to look until you mentioned it, although having done so I don't think it provides a neat answer 😆

In Wales the ballot for the party list election will look like this:

which neatly sidesteps the issue of finding a single noun to describes "party list or independent candidate" by just saying "box". I don't have an example handy for Scotland or London but i suspect they do the same.

[sjorford]

things would be so much easier if we just voted for boxes