board77

I was crushed to find today that the tiny little town where I have to vote has switched over to voting machines.

I always liked the process of putting a paper ballot into that locked steel box, with hard eyed representatives of both parties watching closely to make sure nothing untoward is going on.

Now it's all at the mercy of the programmers and their secret coding that no one can double check. I used a paper ballot, and then feed the ballot into a big thing that looked like a paper shredder. It didn't actually make grinding noises as I left, but it might as well have for how bad it made me feel. There was an optional actual electronic touch screen thingy I could have used, but I didn't.

I cried as we drove away, feeling like my vote counts for less than nothing now. The validity of the vote is now tied up in the honor and integrity of ... of.... a big corporation and it's programmers.

If it makes you feel any better, our state has one of the better auditing trails of any using electronic ballots of any sort. Not quite the same as the steel box and the watchful election officials, I know, but it could be worse.

It just felt like the end of an era. We might as well all vote online now, what's the point of physical polling places?

Voting on-line....hum...that would be interesting.

I'm so opposed to this it's not even funny. It's far too easy to tamper with things, bugs can get in etc. There is so much that can go wrong with electronic voting machines.

Is it possible to spoil a vote on an electronic voting machine?