Sail on, oh mighty ship of State

by jean at 02:49 AM on November 03, 2004

I don't usually get worked up over elections. Yesterday and the day before I wasn't anxious, but now I am. My sister got home from work about nine at night and asked who was winning, and I didn't know because I figure I'll just wake up in the morning and check how the lawsuits are progressing.

As people have noted in the last post, my personal vote in California won't change much. The ship of American State is going to list which way it will regardless of it, but I will say that my vote was not an easy one to place.

I went to the same Foursquare Church in my hometown that's hosted the last two presidential votes. This time there were half as many polling booths as the last time, a huge line, and a new balloting system called InkaVote. I couldn't get the hang of this darn thing. At the registration table a poll worker gave me a ten-second explanation of its use and hustled me into the line for booths. A middle-aged Chinese woman was right behind me, and the poll worker didn't actually explain the system to her. She just asked her, "You heard what I said, right?" I turned to see the woman giving the registration person the kind of polite smile and nod my mom uses when she doesn't know what the heck you're saying, but doesn't want to look dumb for not knowing enough English. Ugh. I wonder if she inked her votes correctly. It took me four tries to get my first vote inked correctly. That first vote, of course, being the vote for President.

I know that California's going Democratic anyways. But it's the principle of the thing. Having to stamp four times just to make a satisfactory dot for your vote for President is unnerving. In the InkaVote system, any smeared dot is invalid, and any partially-filled bubble is invalid. It's up to the individual voter to check their ballot for invalid votes and request a fresh ballot if they've made any mistakes. Meanwhile my InkaVote pen wouldn't completely fill a ballot bubble unless I rotated it after inserting it into the ballot slot. If I didn't rotate the pen, it wouldn't fully ink the bubbles. InkaVote replaces the punch card system... how is this new thing any easier than brushing off a hanging chad? My sister said she had problems with the InkaVote system also, and we've both of us taken dozens, if not hundreds, of computer-scanned tests in our lives. We're practically hard-wired to double and triple-check entries for even the slightest imperfection on these kinds of test sheets. How would a less-experienced voter fare? How about one that never went to college? How about one that never graduated high school?

On top of all this, after a few minutes a poll worker asked me to leave the polling booth. She later said that I was taking too much time. That has never, ever happened to me before, and I've voted every November election and every primary since I've turned 18. Now imagine all this happening in a swing state...