What a clusterfuck!
Instead of being sent sample ballots and punching in your votes (that correspond to the sample ballot), now you go to a website, register, fill out the ballot on your device, then get a bar code. You take a screenshot of that bar code. Then at the polling machine you scan it, your filled-in ballot comes up, you make changes or approve it, then put a paper ballot into the machine (you still following this?), it prints it, returns it, you double check it, then insert it again and voila, you’ve voted. Only eleven steps.
Of course if the scanner didn’t accept your bar code you’re at square one with no sample ballot to guide you through your many choices. And if there are paper jams, which there are frequently, or if you’re not tech savvy, or if you enter the polling place expecting the old system – you are fucked.
Oh, and then there are already articles saying the system could be compromised or glitches could screw things up.
And who made this marvelous Murphy’s Law contraption? Someone in Venezuela. Who needs Russia to tamper with our election when Venezuela is so much closer?
I really feel bad for elderly voters. The ones at my polling place were absolutely terrified. They stared at these voting machines like they were MRI tubes. Bar codes and iPads and pushing “next” buttons and inserting ballots. If this is the new system the elderly should be told to vote by mail.
So the result? Lines were longer, by the late afternoon the wait was two hours in many polling places, everyone was confused, and the totals may be compromised. Good going, California. At a time when we need the most number of people to get out to vote and the time we need the most accurate vote count ever, let’s go off an experiment with a wild new system.
Aren’t things bad enough in this country without voluntarily making them worse?
from By Ken Levine
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