I have known him for many years. He is an authority on the architecture of human visual perception and its consequences for the design of documents. Here he analyzes the claims that the disputed presidential election ballot in Palm Beach County, Florida is misleading and ambiguous. I am a visual perception scientist at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center.
Spatial layout is critical.
In my judgement, this ballot is visually ambiguous. There are two valid ways of parsing this image. One way is by following the arrows from candidates names to punch holes. The arrows are rather small and not clearly shaped, and they have little numbers next to them that add to the visual clutter. It would be perfectly natural for your visual system to treat the arrows as visual texture, and just filter it out.