Florida has installed new
Electronic Voting terminals in place of the old
punch card style
ballots.
I used the
punch card style
ballot in the
2000 Presidential Election. Who knew that my vote for
Ralph Nader was one of the 537 that put
Bush over the top? Had I voted for a candidate that might win, or thought about the consequences of my vote, that might have been reduced by one to 536.
Voting for that election was simple. I was living in a rather
minority-laden district (mostly
Spanish and
African-American) of
Broward County, Florida (
Oakland Park to be exact), and if a
Republican did happen to show up, I'm sure he/she would have been summarily dismissed, and given a swift kick in the
groin. I went in, gave my ID and
voter card to the person who directed me to the appropriate table who (after much searching) managed to find me in the
Non-Partisan book, as I'm registered as a
Libertarian. I received a blank ballot, and I proceeded to the machine.
Instructions were simple. You inserted the ballot till it hit the stop. You picked up this oddly shaped device which was attached to the machine with a
fine chain. It was called a
stylus, but it was shaped more like a
mostly eaten carrot with a
metal rod at the end. The purpose of the
stylus was to insert into the appropriate hole and punch out the
chad, of the person you intended to vote for. The candidates were arranged thusly:
_
Gore------------------- |_|
_
Bush------------------- |_|
_
Nader------------------ |_|
_
Whoever else----------- |_|
There were no "
butterfly ballots" in
Broward County. Those were all in
Palm Beach County. Most of the controversy in this county was from
Blacks and
Hispanics being turned away, and told the ballots were closed. I have yet to meet a person in
Broward County who was actually turned away in that election. Also the issue of "
hanging chads" or "
pregnant chads" and the "
two-corner rule" were big here. It's all the old people. Too feeble to push hard enough to clear a piece of cardboard.....
Moving on to the more recent past.
I recently voted in the
2004 Primary/
Local Elections in my town. I've moved around a bit, and this time I get to vote in "
Margate, FL". My girlfriend and I went together, I presented my ID and
voter registration card and was directed to the appropriate table. My girlfriend, being registered at the same address, by all
reasonable logic, should have also been routed to my table. She was not. After much searching, they again found me in the
Non-Partisan book. I was given a minute long training session in how to use the machine.
- Make sure you vote in every election.
- Make sure your votes are correct.
- Here is what a vote looks like. (A checked box vs. an unchecked box)
- Make sure you vote in every election, if you miss one your whole ballot might be thrown out. (hmmmmmm just because I choose not to vote for parks commissioner I might have my presidential selection invalidated?)
- Make sure you press the "Vote" button at the end.
- Here is the stylus...(It looked suspiciously like the half-eaten carrot device I was familiar with, except it didn't have a metal rod.)
By this time my frustrated girlfriend realized that she was directed to the wrong table, and now arrived at my table. Now she was looking through the book and had to point out her name to the obviously un-search friendly,
elderly woman running the show. "I can't believe he put me at the wrong table", she exclaimed as I went to my machine.
The attendant had to go find the
Non-Partisan "cartridge". She came back a minute later with an oddly shaped black plastic device that looked like it should plug into something, rather like a
SNES cartridge but with more curves. It had no markings, but there must have been to avoid getting them mixed up. (Riiiiiight). She plugged the cartridge in my machine, verified, and off I went.
I went to the
voting booth, and it was nothing like I remembered. I was only presented with a plain white screen
tabletPC-like device. It was the size of a thick large book, such as you might expect to find on a
coffee table somewhere. Upon it was written the local race I was eligible to vote in (
Mayor,
Vice-Mayor, a couple
commissioners, etc) and the candidates names with an obvious
check box next to them. When you pressed the
stylus to the box you wanted, it would put an X in the box. If you did it again, the check disappeared. You could not put 2 checks in for the same race. The machine warned you if you didn't
vote in a
race. You can continue without voting for that race but you must confirm.
Heeding the warning given earlier, I voted in every race, verified my
vote was correct, then hit next at the bottom. It presented my choices back to me in a clear concise report, with the "
Vote" button (a separate button on the top case of the tablet) blinking red. I pressed it, and I was done.
My girlfriend had a similar experience, except since she is a registered
Democrat, she was given the
Democratic primary race as well as the local race.
We left with an odd feeling of nothing about us. I worried for a second what would happen if the link to whatever network they implement went down. I worried what happens if the tablet locked up after I pressed
Vote. There didn't seem to be much to those tablets, but still. I don't believe they were running any
Windows variant, so at least my vote wouldn't be
BSOD'd into the
bit-bucket.
There was a feeling of satisfaction with the old
punch card method. You finished it, you handed it to the guy who was supposed to make sure there were no hanging or
pregnant chads, and you put it in the box! Here I just touched a screen with something that resembled the
snot-sucker they use on babies. No record of anything. Nothing physical.
I was let down.
There are always going to be problems with
computers. Should we really trust these devices to something as important and unrepeatable as an
election? I know we trust them with
saving lives, and
counting money, and even
landing airplanes. An
election is something different altogether. So far paper has worked fine. In the one case it was very very close, it failed us. Should we be so quick as to move to an
electronic form? What if the
database becomes corrupted? What if it's close again and the state demands a
recount? How are we going to physically verify a vote? Short answer is "We Can't". Long answer... Well the machine can give you the same answer it did before...
Recounts are necessary because we are human and we might have missed a ballot or two got stuck together, or some old fogey didn't press hard enough and got a
hanging chad. A
computer doesn't know if its broken. It doesn't know if its own screen is
miscalibrated and everyone who voted for
Kerry, really voted for
Bush. It simply doesn't have the human capacity to know that precinct 247 is shy about a thousand votes, and they'll be found tomorrow because the new guy didn't turn his box in. A computer won't be able to give a
recount, just the same answer again. Is that enough? Should we also demand an
audit trail of some type, like a paper receipt with some code that everybody can lose?
Here is my grand plan for it all:
Florida Election officials don't need to reinvent the wheel. The
electronic voting machines shouldn't handle the counting exclusively, only an interface which then prints out a ballot you put in the box. That way we can be sure. Provided everybody does there job, the
manual recount can easily be handled. Now there's just the question of
paper and
ink for the machines.... (runs screaming from the
blank ballot that printed from the out of ink machine.)