Wednesday, August 27, 2008

Voter education in Florida

Florida held local/state elections yesterday. Poll workers collapsed from boredom as turnout was "lite." Every voter who was ok to vote had to practice the new system, which replaced the simple old touchscreen systems of yore. Before you were allowed to proceed to a voting booth, you had to take up an object called a pen, and fill in an oval, completely, under the watchful eyes of a poll worker. I don't recall ever having had to practice before exercising citizenly duties on the oldfangled Diebolds (now Premier) and other electronic devices.



(Image is not actual repro of supersecret FL technological breakthrough)

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3 Comments:

Blogger Unknown said...

No ovals here. You needed to fill in the arrow that pointed to the candidate. It was still an optical system, and we've used it in this county (Clay) since I've been voting, six years I'd guess.

8/27/2008 4:18 PM  
Blogger Tom Matrullo said...

Right - I ought to have made it clear that while many counties went back to ovals, others did not, since, in our wisdom, we leave it to localities to choose their own methods and machines. Also ought to have made it clear that some counties still used Diebold/Premier machines to tabulate the manual ballots. And some maintained the Florida tradition of having problems with that equipment.

8/27/2008 9:26 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

In a world in which computer networks are involved in nearly every facet of business and personal life, it is paramount that each of us understand the basic features, operations and limitations of different types of computer networks.

8/29/2008 3:57 AM  

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