Today Amber and I took the kids and headed down to the Randall’s grocery store near my office and voted on the way home after work. We knew we were in the right place because most grocery store parking lots aren’t littered with campaign signs. Texas has this early voting thing where they set up a limited number of polling stations for a couple of weeks and let you come in regardless of precinct and vote. It seems like a good idea, but really it is still only about half as convenient as mail in ballots. I haven’t gone to a polling place since 2000. In Washington it is easy to get an absentee ballot. In Texas you have to be disabled or out of the county during election day and you have to request a ballot every year.
The line was pretty long, but it moved quickly. They are using an all electronic ballot here. Which was pretty easy to use, though I think a touch screen might have been more intuitive. I’m sure they have the usability studies to prove me wrong on that. No paper trail. So unlike an ATM when you withdraw $5 and get a receipt, here I vote for the President of the United States of America and it just says “Your ballot has been cast”. Has it? What if the machine reboots or has other problems? A verifiable paper trail is not too much to ask.
The whole process worked like this: You stood in line and then presented your voter registration card. They then generated a little sticker which they placed on a sheet of paper. It had your name and address. You signed next to it, confirming the info was correct. Then the next person gave you a little receipt with a pin number on it. You have to enter the pin number to begin voting. The pin is linked to your precinct so the correct electronic ballot is presented. Of course it isn’t a hard stretch to do this math: voter registration = little pin code = ballot = your exact vote. They could all very easily be linked together in a one-to-one way. Didn’t feel very confidential to me, but I’m the paranoid type.
At least the thing wasn’t a Diebold. The product we used is called the eSlate and is made by Hart Intercivic. A company that happens to have offices right up the street. If you are curious they have a simulator you can try here. Hart does make an add-on for what they call the “Verifiable Ballot Option”, that Travis County apparently isn’t using. Which as they describe it: “the Verifiable Ballot Option (VBO), which allows voters to review a printed paper record before casting their ballots.” I certainly would have felt a lot more comfortable. In case you need one you can pick up the eSlate for $3000, add an extra $1200 for the VBO.
So rack up 2 votes for Obama, plus a couple of school bond initiatives. Unless of course the machine didn’t really count them. On the up side, if there is a big debacle surrounding this election I won’t have to go far to picket the voting machine folks.
