This morning my wife and I took part in one of the greatest acts that an American can perform. We voted. I’m not going to say here who I voted for; I don’t believe that it matters in the point of this post.
The reason I’m posting this is because there was one glaring problem that bothered me today. In Maricopa County, you mark your ballot and then feed it into a machine that is supposed to do something with it. The problem was, the machine jammed twenty minutes after voting started. It was the only machine they had at my polling place. There wasn’t a backup machine available. Instead, everyone stood around waiting while a feeble attempt was made to get the machine working again. About twenty minutes later, they opened the hatch on the machine and instructed voters to just manually place their ballots into the scanner’s receptacle.
I believe in Murphy’s Law in that when you have a single device, in use for a single day by many people it will fail. Why was there not a backup plan in place before the polls opened? I don’t know. It would have been adequate for me at least, if the thought of opening the hatch and letting people deposit their vote manually had occurred about fifteen minutes earlier.
My concern is when voting becomes a pain in the rear; you might be less likely to vote next time. It should be quick, easy and painless. It’s bad enough having to stand in line to get your ballot, let alone turn it in.
Would an electronic voting system fared any better? I don’t know. Is their poor grammar and spelling in this post? I would be shocked if there wasn’t.
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