So it's only a primary election. The new DIEBOLD electronic voting machines don't scare me, so much as they depress me. As in, "I give up."It's not just that they are DIEBOLD "I will deliver you the state of Ohio" brand voting machines. It's not that Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell (who I hope wins the primary today because we need to see how he would do in the election for governor - either he loses, yay, the Democrat wins or he wins, the people of Ohio really are that awful and boy-howdy will we rethink our decision to stay here) did everything he could to get the DIEBOLD electronic voting machines in place - and he owns stock in the company.
No, it's the printing sounds.
You use the touch screen to vote. You are given the chance to review which ballots you cast. And then the machine "prints" them (though you receive no receipt or proof) and makes a "printing noise" and the machine vibrates to suggest there is actual printint going on.
What kind of a**hole do you think I am? Why does it need to print what I know is being recorded electronically (or not)? And since shen has a printer made a rumbling or crunching sound? Since I bought my last dot-matirix printer in 1990, all printers use heat in the 21st century, from your laser printer to the ATM machine to the cop writing you a traffic ticket.
There is a little machine in there that makes noise and makes the DIEBOLD electronic voting machine vibrate to ease your mind and make you think there is a printed record in there. Even if there is a printed record, the machine is there to provide reassuring, sensory proof to the nervous human. Even though it isn't.
Maybe I have nothing to worry about. But anything false that is provided by the government to ease my troubled mind makes me troubled.
UPDATE: Several polling locations took a couple of hours to fire up any of their machines, according to county elections official Cheryl Ellis. Voters should have been offered paper ballots meanwhile, but (some voters were) told just to try again later.
Meanwhile, the machines for counting absentee ballots were shut down after bad trial runs. Michael Vu, Cuyahoga elections director, said he would ask his board to authorize a hand count of the county's roughly 16,000 absentee ballots. - cleveland.com
I live in a third-world country.
4 comments:
Wow. After a while I start to wonder "how stupid do they think we are?" But I know the answer. They think we're THAT stupid.
"It's not that Secretary of State Kenneth Blackwell (who I hope wins the primary today because we need to see how he would do in the election for governor - either he loses, yay, the Democrat wins or he wins, the people of Ohio really are that awful and boy-howdy will we rethink our decision to stay here)"
I was entertaining the idea of asking for a Republican ballot, simply to vote against Blackwell... It's not really that the Republicans are that strong in the State that bothers me, though it still does, but that the Democrats suck soooo bad as to not be able to beat these clowns.
Check out this disturbing account from a campaign worker about the one precinct that held up counting the entire state of Ohio's ballots.
I encountered one of these new machines at, of all places, the county fair last year. I asked several pointed questions and got to try it out. The elections board person seemed pretty knowledgeable.
A printed copy of the ballot is a good idea and provides a paper train. The noice, alas, is a symptom of industrial design. An inkjet printer wouldn;t work as A) the in runs if it gets wet. B) The printers are used maybe 3-4 times a year at best about thecartridges would dry out.
The impact style printers are used because they are built to withstant printing thousands of times. Remember that green bar paper we used to see back in high school? Well banks still use it because they have to print so many documents and these printeres are cheaper to operate in the long run.
Alas, I read the reports of all the cock-ups in the PD. Technology is great. But it isn't always the answer. Back to the drawing board guys.
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