Voting Machines
I voted today in Cleveland using a Diebold machine. As everyone on this blog knows there have been many articles written about how easy it would be for party operatives to hack one of these machines. The actual touch-screen process was easy and it appears that it was backed up by a printed receipt (which I didn't get to keep). But each voter needed a "key card" to vote and there appeared to be only one key card per machine, so you had to wait for one voter to finish and return the key card to the proper poll-worker at the desk and then this person would hand it to you. Even though the polling station wasn't that busy, there was a lot a confusion and delay about getting and handing back this little key card, and I could have easily walked off with it after I voted. This is a big problem and is going to cause delays, even if they have plenty of extra cards and losing one doesn't pose a security concern.
posted by Paul @ 9:26 AM
2 Comments:
Just as Paul anticipates, there are lots more bad reports out of Ohio on Josh Marshall's blog already this morning. Looks like the GOP has engineered yet another day of horrible voting experiences in Ohio's Democratic precincts.
Yes, I see reports of other types of malfunctions. I had no malfunctions, and yet I could sense that the poll-workers were having a hard time with coordinating the voters' signing in, with their presenting their photo IDs (also a new Ohio law that will cause problems and delays), with their handing out of the key cards, and with the receiving of the key cards back. Even with the machine working properly, the sum total of all these operations was quite complex and more than your average human could handle flawlessly again and again, especially with impatient voters staring at them. In fact, the poll-worker forgot to ask me for my photo ID (take that, Ken Blackwell!). I can only imagine what would happen if the machine didn't work too.
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