Thirteen days after Election Day we still don’t know who the president is. This is great for columnists, as it gives us time to think about what went wrong and point it out gleefully. And really, I don’t care who gets elected. Local issues are more important to me than some doddering fool who will say all the right lies during the campaign and then do all the wrong things in office.
What I really want to know is, why don’t we have results yet? We live in a digital world. My washing machine has a freakin’ computer in it, but we still punch holes in pieces of paper and have machines or other people try to interpret the holes and tally a winner. What is the point of this antiquated system? Are we trying to invite difficulty and encourage corruption?
In St. Louis, polling places couldn’t deal with the outpouring of voters. Some people weren’t going to get to vote. The lack of facilities was the government’s fault, so Democrats sued and got a court order keeping the polls open longer. Voters continued doing their duty until Republicans appealed and a court shut the polls down. So voters in St. Louis were left standing in line, unable to vote. That’s sick and wrong.
On the home front, Republicans are claiming election fraud by Oregon’s secretary of state, Democrat Bill Bradbury, because he told an aide that they were going to “pull it out for Gore.” I could write a whole column about that, but the state only has seven electoral votes. As my co-worker Jeremy Lang noted at 3 a.m. election night, Florida stole our sunshine.
And wow, what fraud possibilities the Sunshine State offers. From a supposedly confusing ballot to “hanging chads” to a secretary of state who is also one of Bush’s top cronies in Florida: Columnists and comedians across the country have been having a field day.
But my point isn’t to make fun of the poor Floridians who don’t know how to vote or count. Too much Bingo isn’t the culprit here — it’s our sad excuse for a voting system. So I’ll engage in a little futurism. It’s nearly 2001; let’s go on a voting odyssey.
Imagine you’re in a mall in 2012. It’s the middle of Election Week; there are only three more days left to vote. Do you rush home to begin poking at pieces of tagboard? No. Just walk over to one of the digital kiosk voting booths in the mall and vote in less than three minutes.
You step into the voting booth, seal the door and press your thumb on the touch screen. Your voter information is displayed for confirmation, and then the first item on the ballot appears. You must press the name of the candidate or the word “yes” or “no” for measures, and only one choice can be made before moving on to the next item.
When you’re finished, a complete list of your choices appears. If any of these need to be changed, touch the name and make a new choice. Your ballot is entered into the system, and when all the polls close, you’ll find out who won.
The beauty of a system like this is its accessibility, accuracy and fairness. No news agency, no government body, no one would get results until the voting was finished. When the polls did close, the computer would release the final results; no re-counts, no projections based on 2 percent of precincts reporting, no voters turned away due to lack of facilities or scared away due to early results. Kiosks could be placed anywhere — malls, post offices, city halls or coffee shops.
Unlike voting on the Internet, as some pundits have suggested, digital kiosks would run on an intranet, so computer hackers wouldn’t have access. Each county’s election office would have a main server, and all offices would be connected by an intranet. People could register to vote up until the moment the polls close, and the computer would know instantly if the voter was registered elsewhere.
We don’t have to wait until 2012 to have a fair, sensible and accurate voting system. Kiosks like this are a possibility now. No one needs to be confused by butterfly ballots any longer. TV networks wouldn’t have to balance their sense of ethics against their need to be first — not that they’re really balancing now. And most importantly, voters don’t have to wait… and wait… and wait to find out the will of the people.
We have a strong economy and a budget surplus; let’s use it to shore up our voting system and ensure that the legitimacy of our government isn’t questioned. On the eve of the new millennium, can we please stop punching holes in pieces of paper?