Fear and Loathing at the polling place

I just voted. It felt good, as always, but it was the first time I've voted using a touch-screen unit.

It's daunting, even for someone who's pretty computer literate. I predict enormous problems and slow-downs come election day, especially for anyone who's never dealt with computers or touch-screen displays. I simply can't imagine what a mess it will be in the general election when turn-out is much higher.

I would imagine that the election judges will have to go to assist at least half, if not 3/4 of the voters to help them get through the process at least for the first time. Knowing how many people have problems with the punch card system, I don't even want to think about how tough introducing this stuff is going to be.

The first gauntlet you must pass is having the election workers take your information and enter it into some computer, and then a printout is produced. Another machine then spits out a credit card like thing imprinted with your information on a magnetic strip, which they hand to you.

You then go over to this little gizmo and face a screen around 12 x 10" The first screen shows a page of instructions. They're well done thankfully, and you can go back to them at any time in the process.

Next you're shown what looks like a blown up version of the normal ballot. Older people or those with sight problems will like the fact that it's in pretty large type.

You then simply touch a box next to your selection and it fills in an X for you and you move to the next race.

Then when that page is completed, you have to press a "next" button at the bottom, which shouldn't be a problem as it's a big green arrow. I assume most people will get past at least that part.

But at the end after several pages, is the verification process, and that's where the hang-ups will occur.

At this point, you can display your ballot choices for review, and you have to scroll through them to view them (Some people won't know how to do this). There's some instructions on the side telling voters how they can go back and change any of their votes. (the poll worker told me that you simply touch another square and it automatically removes your old vote and places your new one.)

After you're done reviewing your vote, which for some elderly people might take half a day, you can move on. But you're not done yet, and this is the part that almost hung me up -- reviewing the paper record of your vote.

To the right, there's the equivalent of a grocery store receipt tape and it's under a little door thing. You lift the door, and there's a clear plastic window through which you can view the tape.

On the tape is a record of your votes. The only problem is that this window isn't long enough to show all your votes, so you have to find a button on the screen to scroll it forward a little, which it does, then you have to press it again, and then again, until all your ballot has been printed and scrolled up for review.

I'm not certain, but I think it's at this point where you finally push the "submit ballot" button (or something like that) and it records your vote and imprints something on your little voter's card. You're then instructed to remove the card and return it to the poll worker.

The system isn't bad. It's pretty slick actually. But introducing it for the first time to people, in particular the elderly, is going to be a very tough process.

And as always, these DiBold machines are a mess as far as security measures go and I simply don't trust them to be as secure as older voting measures.

Hackers have demonstrated that they can get access to programming codes and shown how the system can be gamed and altered at any number of steps along the way, in order to allow a person to vote multiple times, switch votes, count only every other vote, or any number of ways to tamper with the results. At least the system I used actually provides a paper record of each vote, though the security of those tapes must be ensured as well.

Touch-screen voting is apparently the way it's going to be into the foreseeable future, and we can only hope that the vendors are responsive to security holes and that our clerk's office is aggressive in fixing them as they're found.