I Rocked the Vote (I Think)

Yesterday was typically one of my favorite days of the year, voting day. Granted it being an odd year, there wasn’t really much across the nation for the talking heads to screw up like they have done in recent years with their feebly conceived polling system. But yesterday was a day of note due that it was the first year that Ohio instituted the statewide computer voting system. After hear about all the horror stories about the problems they caused last year, I assumed they would take the past year to iron out the concerns before spreading it statewide, but was I horribly wrong.

The first thing I noticed when walking into the gym where I vote was something I have never witness in my almost decade worth of voting, a line. I have voted in all but one election since turning eighteen, although I must admit, I cast my ballot absentee a couple times in college, but this was the first time ever I had to wait to cast my vote. The next thing I noticed was they had the computers lined up against the wall with the screens facing the line so really anyone was average eye sight could see exactly who or what you were voting for.

When I finally arrived at my computer to vote (see pitcure but we had about half the amount of computers), I noticed that the blinders to shield the person next to you were less than half a foot long rendering them useless from any wondering eyes of your voting neighbor and of course the line behind you could also easily check out your vote as mentioned earlier and the volunteers who paced behind voters like proctors at an exam, except they didn’t punish anyone who was looking at someone else’s ballot, instead they looked like they were just check out who you were voting for themselves. Not that any of that pertained to me because I was sent to the last computer in between the wall and a computer that had already broken down. Already broke on the first day of use, no wonder there was a line.

And privacy was the least of my worries when I started to vote. The computer themselves stood about four feet high so I hade to spend the whole time bending over to read the screen because it was set at a height for a grade school student. I’m sure this was done as not to put people of shorter stature at a disadvantage, but in turn it just put people of normal height or taller at the disadvantage. And of course there was no way to adjust the screen.

Then when I finally finished my ballot, guaranteeing a week’s worth of back pain, I ended up having to push print ballot three times, not that anything actually printed out. After my personalized debit card popped back out of the machine, I spent a couple minutes analyzing my computer to make sure there wasn’t anything that actually printed out even thought I heard it make a printing should like at my ATM printing the receipt. So I took my debit card back to the volunteer, passing all the other computers where it would have been easily to check out how people vote, handed it back in. And that was it, there was no way to tell that what was stored on my debit card actually represented what I thought I was voting for and know quite well how easy it is, even accidentally, to erase information on one of those cards. And someone pointed out to me today that there is no way to make a write-in vote with the new computer system.

All of this because people were too stupid to check their paper ballots to make sure their votes when all of the way through and not leaving a hanging or pregnant chad. But to alleviate the problem of people not checking their ballot, they have replaced it with a method where you cannot check your ballot even if you wanted too. How is that a solution? We really need to go back to the paper ballot and for those to stupid to check their own ballot to make sure it is done correctly don’t deserve to have their ballot to be counted in the first place.

But I guess not many other people had that problem yesterday anyways as only three million other Buckeyes voted yesterday. For those keeping track at home, that is out of eleven million citizens and eight million registered voters. That would come to 39.7% turnout. Wow, that’s barely a third and we had five amendments to the state constitution on the ballot too. The worst of the worst in terms of turnout would be Athens County which so happens to be the home of Ohio University. Way to rock the vote guys.