Good morning.
Thursday in Whitewater will be mostly sunny with a high of 82. Sunrise is 5:56 AM and sunset 8:03 PM for 14h 07m 03s of daytime. The moon is a waning crescent with 28.8% of its visible disk illuminated.
On this day in 1977, 24-year-old postal employee David Berkowitz (“Son of Sam”) is arrested for a series of killings in the New York City area over the period of one year.
Government forms of all kinds — ballot envelopes, tax forms, etc. — should be straightforward. This requires looking at the form from a user’s point of view. There’s good news on this point, as Margaret Faust reports Clerks say new absentee ballot envelopes will prevent mistakes (‘Changes to absentee ballot envelopes aim to help voters understand the process for making sure their ballots are counted’):
The Wisconsin Elections Commission, or WEC, voted unanimously last week to redesign envelopes containing completed absentee ballots. The changes were due to feedback from 250 people, including clerks and voters, in 11 different communities around the state.
Beginning with the 2024 spring primary, there will be step-by-step instructions detailing how to fill out the envelopes. There will be an alert icon — an exclamation point inside a triangle — to remind people what witness information needs to be included on the envelope. WEC spokesperson John Smalle said this is the most significant change.
Claire Woodall-Vogg, the municipal clerk for the city of Milwaukee, agrees. She said the most frequent mistake she sees in her office is envelopes missing the address of witnesses. This is a trend statewide. She believes the alert icon will make a difference.
“The envelope is made to be more user-friendly, less legalese,” Woodall-Vogg said. “Your eye is drawn to where there needs to be action.”
The new design also specifies that envelopes will be color coded depending on the type of voter. For example, domestic and international absentee voters will have different-colored strips on the back of their envelopes. Smalle said this will help clerks and postal workers keep track of ballots.
Wisconsin is joining 18 states that already use this color-coding system.
Yes, and more of this: there are doubtless forms apart from ballot envelopes that could use a simpler design.
These shapes roll in peculiar ways thanks to new mathematics: