The NYTimes has a long article up about the numerous problems with touch-screen voting machines. Between the actual machines themselves, the printer that's supposed to record the votes, the server that runs the whole thing -- there are just too many chances for something to go badly wrong. If we lived in a sensible country we would radically simplify the entire process and go to straight paper voting, either with a mail-in system, or at the very least with polling done on a Saturday. The money currently being wasted on the machines should go to training and paying poll workers. Currently, our voting procedures are a joke, and tell us a lot about how seriously we take our democracy, that is to say, not very much at all.
But I did enjoy this bit from the NYT piece, about the punch card machines:
During the Florida recount in the Bush-Gore election, it became clear that punch cards had a potentially tragic flaw: "hanging chads."
"Tragic flaw"... ? Well, maybe, I suppose, in that watching the Florida disaster certainly did make me want to gouge out my eyes. Apart from that the term may be somewhat misapplied.
(Pictured: in ancient times, the question of who would be entrusted to lead a nation was settled by confronting a bizarre, inscrutable hybrid entity that asked perplexing questions. We have made great progress since those primitive days.)
