An Unsatisfactory Voting Experience

Anyone who regularly reads this site will probably know that I'm a political junkie. I have always loved the campaigning, the speeches, the polls, watching the returns on election night, and most of all, exercising my own right to vote. In the past, voting has always been an empowering and very pleasurable experience for me. But this year was different.

It wasn't the waiting. Actually, I only had to wait in line about fifteen minutes, which I guess is a long time for a small county like Potter (Potter and Randall counties combined only have about 135,000 voters). And while I didn't like the election worker treating me like I was an idiot, that really wasn't it either. She just insisted on explaining the voting machine in great detail, even though I knew very well how to operate it.

No, what ruined my voting experience was the voting machine itself. It was an electronic machine with absolutely no paper trail. It was not hard to operate, and at the end it told me I had voted for every Democrat on the ballot (and a couple of Libertarians). But is that the way it will be counted?

As I left the voting area, all I could think of was how machines in other places were switching votes. There was no way I could be sure that the machine will count my votes as they were cast. As a matter of fact, no one else can be sure the votes were correctly counted either. The only thing that can be checked is whether the correct number of votes were counted (because of the paper sign-in sheets).

Even worse, there is no way the votes can be recounted to make sure they were counted correctly. I felt as though I was completely at the mercy of a machine I don't trust and people I don't know. Even a poll watcher would be of no value.

We have got to outlaw these electronic machines with no paper trail. What good is an election you cannot trust?