Reverse order is apporpriate here:
MACHINERY: The new machines have a large LCD display...but not a touch screen. They have a roller/selector wheel and a few control buttons. This is a usable and easy to understand user interface...IT IS ALSO OF COURSE UNLIKE ANY OTHER WIDELY UNDERSTOOD USER INTERFACE ON THE MARKET TODAY!!! Instead of choosing something like an ATM, or Palm Pilot, or Cell Phone or Mouse/touchpad...government was bound to pick something entirely different! The closest thing anyone might be familiar with is selecting your high-score initials with a Centipede roller-ball and fire button...but I digress.
The point is, I counted 6 voting "eSlates," a badge/name sticker printer, and a Dell Inspiron Laptop networking all the machines together. In all, there had to be $10,000 worth of stuff...and where was my vote stored? On the HDD of the Dell?
I can guarantee that I have the least confidence of my vote being counted today than EVER before...even when I knew there were only Dem poll workers in my precinct. The new rush to electronic voting is a bad freakin idea.
POLL WORKERS: These are the people that actually can't find the "ANY KEY" on the keyboard. And I, an electrical engineer in the PC business for 15 years, am being forced to endure a training session on how to vote with the sample machine by a someone that taps on the machine to make it hurry. And his training demo consisted of "britney spears vs. bruce willis" for governor. Really. Not one name on the sample ballot had anything to do with anything other than pop culture. So you get your nametag and passcode and off you go to vote at a booth. I will admit that it's fast, and at the end it presents you with a summary page of how you want to vote. At this point, I'd LOVE to have it print me a nice official ballot with all those selections that I could slide in the old ballot box...but no. It shows me an animated US flag and sez thanks for voting. DID I REALLY?
VOTERS: There was a nice old farmer-Jones behind me who seemed astonished by the newfangledcomputermachinery. I said I wished I hadn't bought all this junk with my taxes and he said "me too, I liked them paper ballots just fine." Might he be inimidated by this next time? Maybe. Old men-folk don't like to be embarrassed by young punk kids with technology. Then there was the quality voter in front of me: A red-eyed pair of torn jean derelicts, whom you'd think were dressed like construction workers if not for the fact that it was 10AM and they would've been working if they were employed. One, laughing about being in the beer aisle said, "That Barrie, uh, Gonzalie Bariento. That guy that drinks, man, he's got my vote!! I mentioned loudly, "Before you do that, did you know that he was also one of the primary supporters of the new Open Container Ban?" And he said, "Oh, well, then scratch that guy!"
Oh God. The Republic is lost...and we won't even have the paper ballots to prove it.