Voting Today

I voted today.

I had a weird experience though and I had the election judge baffled. I'm not sure anything wrong happened, or that my ballot was cast repeatedly, although I have no way of being sure. I voted, printed my paper ballot and was chided to cast my ballot. I hit cast ballot and then it said my card was inserted upside down, so I had to revote.

I asked the election judge about it, he was as baffled as I was because we verified that the card was in right. He said my card shouldn't work again, that it needed to be re-encoded. That wasn't the case, the card allowed me to vote again.

The same thing happened once more.

Third time was a charm though and it finally accepted my ballot.

God, I wish these things were reliable.

Diebold, who makes the voting machines I used today, also makes ATM machines. What do you think would happen if they turned over ATM technology to a bank that couldn't be sure that they were tracking all the money? Banks wouldn't use their technology. Unless they can ensure 100% accuracy in voting, we shouldn't use their machines either.

I heard on NPR as well a complaint from someone saying that it's onl;y 1 or 2% that are having problems voting and that it's not that big of a deal but in a day and age where elections are decided with margins of less than 2% that seems to me to be a huge deal.

We need reliability and accountability in our election systems once again, otherwise, what's the point?

(P.S. Go vote for Pete Ashdown and Christian Burridge.)