Tomorrow is Super Tuesday; a huge day for the presidential primaries and a good time to look deep in our hearts and consider how we feel about usability. Usability probably ranks pretty low on the list of issues voters are considering this year. It is bound up in the infrastructure of the political process and should go unnoticed, silently contributing to the accurate expression of a voter’s decisions.

Usability issues come to our attention when the process fails, as shown by the notoriety of the hanging chad. Lost or erroneous votes could affect the outcome of an election, especially in a neck and neck race like we’ve seen in recent elections. In early January, Clive Thompson’s story, Can You Count On Voting Machines, ran in The New York Times Magazine. The piece looks at the troubling weak points in the machinery on which our elections rely.

Last week, the radio program Interactive Technologies did a story on the role of usability in assuring the integrity of elections. They referenced an MIT Technology Review article called Voting with (Little) Confidence that looks at the work of researchers who are assessing current voting technologies and trying to create systems that are more intuitive and reliable. The Usability Professionals’ Association has a project on Voting and Usability, as part of their usability and civic life. Their site has information on design principles, ethics, and links for local election officials.

One group of researchers has a really cool website, the Caltech/MIT Voting Technology Project. The site is an incredible resource, hosting an incredible quantity of research on the systems we depend on to convey the voice of the people. Ok, maybe that’s a bit grandiose, but the role of usability in maintaining confidence in elections is a deservedly high profile place for a set of practices that usually don’t get much recognition.

Donald Norman drew attention to the ubiquity of usability issues with his book The Design of Everyday Things. He pointed out that bad usability causes accidents, as grave as Three Mile Island or simply frustrating when we look like idiots trying to opening a door, or programming a VCR… ok so that’s less of a problem these days. But if all goes smoothly next time you cast your ballot, say thank you to that underappreciated cornerstone of democracy, usability.

And just to be safe, have a look at the Voting Technology Project’s Seven Steps to Make Sure Your Vote is Counted.