I'm writing this while half listening to a bunch of pundits guessing early results in the 2006 mid-term elections. And some of this strikes me as bizarre.
We have the lawyers already involved in getting injunctions to extend voting hours because of machine problems; voting stations running out of ballots; candidates' names disappearing or truncated on voting machines. Any real overall result this evening seems to be extremely unlikely, and any long-term decisions in states where voter fraud and machine fraud are alleged could stretch the whole process out for a week or more. There are, no doubt, a lot of lawyers sitting in VIP lounges at northeastern airports ready to be scrambled in corporate jets to fly anywhere in the country.
I don't hold any real political position in the US; heck, I don't even have a vote! But the democratic process just isn't working properly.
Take the situation where Latino voters were harassed outside a polling station by two men -- one brandishing a shotgun -- trying to persuade them they were ineligible to vote. And isn't it harassment to be bullied by someone looking for exit poll information: surely one's vote is confidential?
And now we have the pundits predicting victories when the polls haven't closed on the West Coast and a full four hours before the ballots close in Hawaii. What effect has all this on the voter who hasn't yet made the trek to his/her polling station? Will he believe that his vote is now unimportant because everybody is against your cause; or it's unimportant because everybody is clearly supporting your cause -- and it's raining outside, damn it!
These situations can be remedied fairly simply.
There should be a neutral zone around polling stations -- let's say, 100 yards at least. A police officer outside each polling station would monitor the no-entry zone and immediately react if somebody approached a voter walking to vote, or leaving after voting. Inside the polling station there would only be officially-badged election officials, whose job would be to vet the voter and help with any mechanical needs for the voter to perform his rights.
Polling stations should, of course, be open for the same periods of time, not staggered by time zone. That might have worked when there were no instant communications across the nation; it clearly does not work now; elections are not a matter of getting results as quickly as possible, they should be a matter of fairness.
Make the window 6 AM to midnight EST. That would be 3 AM to 9 PM PST and midnight to 6 PM Hawaiian time. It would put the pundits out of business with all the counts, nationwide, starting at exactly the same time.
That's fair. Now what do we do with those voting machines? People just cannot help playing a machine for all it is worth; it's just too tempting to boost your own political agenda. If this was a casino slots jackpot, the gaming board would be keeping you waiting on a stool -- with many a free drink being delivered by a hostess looking for a big tip -- while they checked out the legality of the EEPROM in the machine. Obviously, with the vast number of the voting machines that are deployed, such checks are not possible. But what would be possible would be for all machines at a polling station to be linked to a control source and memory. That could be totally secured at the start of the voting day and verified at the end of the day.
That approach would work. Voting machines with paper trails can still be faked. The people who make the decisions on which voting machines to buy do not have the understanding of the electronics to make wise decisions. And you certainly cannot trust the vendors to tell all.
But can we count on the U.S. government to make informed choices about these issues? Given the assertion that the Internet is a series of tubes, by the duly-elected Senator apparently responsible for Internet law, does not inspire great hope…
