Letting the Voter Count

[BigV]

Originally Posted by Griff

Apparently some of these electronic machines make winning by write in voting almost impossible. They use a wheel and click deal to put each letter in individually.... yay 2 party system...

I used this machine (or one of its evil cousins) for the primary in September. I specifically asked to use it, and I asked the poll worker to rig for blind user. I did ask him to NOT disable the screen, but that option was available. I put on the headset and conducted my vote through the keypad like the one on the phone 1-9, 0, * and #. I did try to write in a candidate. It was agonizing. I had to spell out the name by using 2 for a, 22 for b, 222 for c, 3 for d, 33 for e, etc. Then every choice had to be confirmed with * or #, I forget, but it wasn't consistent. At one point # was confirm/continue and later # was go back. Idiots.

I asked him about my "receipt", which was printed on a roll of paper like a register tape (tits on a boar to a blind voter...). No braille was available.

The whole process was brutal. Even when I used my hearing and sight the machine was clunky at best. They did have a ups on the system, I didn't see any exposed ports, but I wasn't trying to crash the machine, just inspect the tidiness of the setup. I'm...underwhelmed. It's a tablet pc with a touch screen, running windows (that's a guess, but an educated one). It looked somewhat "ruggedized" but I doubt it would enjoy a fall from the wispy tripod it was setup on. It's gonna be ugly.