Election Day

After hearing stories of long lines and waits up to 6 hours in many places for early voting, I decided to get up at the crack of dawn to be at my polling place an hour before the doors opened. I arrived at 6:15 AM to see a small line already forming outside the door of about 18 people, so I apparently wasn’t the only person with plans to beat the crowds. With good weather, the wait outside wasn’t too bad. I grabbed the 20th spot in a line that grew progressively longer with each passing minute. Once the doors opened, the line flowed into the armory rather quickly to a row of tables designated by different letter ranges in the alphabet. It only took a couple of minutes before I was given a plastic card for the Diebold voting machines. I spied a machine in the back of the armory and made my way over. When I inserted the card into the machine something happened and the machine failed to work. One of the workers came over and opened the machine, did something that made some funny sounds, and inserted the card only to have it fail again. He went to the registration table to get another card for the machine. When he inserted this card the machine failed to work for a third time. He opened that machine again, did something, and closed it. He then waived over an official of some sort and got yet another card for the machine. After inserting this card, the machine finally worked and I could vote.

I’ve never been a big fan of these Diebold voting machines. They have too many issues and there isn’t a paper trail should the election be contested. The really scary part is you don’t know what is going on inside that machine when you cast your ballot. This just seems fundamentally wrong to me.