Dave Barry on e-voting, for a little humor.

[Amaryllis]

Posted on Fri, Sep. 13, 2002

How to vote in 1 easy step: Use chisel, tablet

The question you're asking yourself is: Does South Florida contain the highest concentration of morons in the entire world? Or just in the United States?

The reason you're asking this, of course, is South Florida's performance in Tuesday's election. This election was critical to our image, because of our performance in the 2000 presidential election -- the one that ended up with the entire rest of the nation watching, impatiently, as clumps of sleep-deprived South Florida election officials squinted at cardboard ballots, trying to figure out what the hell the voters were thinking when they apparently voted for two presidents, or no presidents, or part of a president, or, in some cases, simply drooled on the ballot.

Before it was over, we had roughly 23 million lawyers down here -- nearly a quarter of the nation's lawyer supply -- filing briefs and torts and arguing in endless televised hearings, until finally the whole mess wound up in the U.S. Supreme Court, which declared George W. Bush the winner, but only because it would have been unconstitutional to apply the more logical remedy, which would be to kick Florida out of the union. We were a national joke. The phrase ''Florida voter'' became a standard comedy-routine synonym for ``idiot.''

And thus there was a lot of pressure on Florida, and particularly South Florida, to redeem itself in Tuesday's election. We knew that we could not afford to repeat the 2000 fiasco, and our election officials had more than a year and a half to develop, and test, a voting procedure that even we could not screw up.

So what did our election officials do? Let's examine the problem, and two possible solutions:

THE PROBLEM: Voters had trouble understanding a balloting system that required them to punch holes in a piece of cardboard.

SOLUTION A: Use an even simpler system.

SOLUTION B: Use a more complicated system.

Pretty much any life form with a central nervous system, including a reasonably bright squid, would choose Solution A. So naturally our election officials went with Solution B. Yes. Having seen that South Florida voters -- people who have yet to figure out how an automobile turn signal works -- were baffled by pieces of cardboard, our leaders decided to confront them with . . . computers! And we all know how easy it is to figure out unfamiliar computer systems! That's why the expression ''As easy as figuring out an unfamiliar computer system'' is so common.

So Miami-Dade County spent $24.5 million on 7,200 computerized voting machines. Broward spent $17.2 million on 5,200 of the same machines. The particular model that we bought is called the ``iVotronic.''

TIP FOR CONSUMERS: Never buy a product whose manufacturer does not understand the basic rules of capitalization.

But confronting voters with unfamiliar machines does not, by itself, ensure that your election will be a mess. No, to GUARANTEE failure, you need to take additional precautions, such as: (1) Not training poll workers adequately; (2) Providing confusing instructions; (3) Not having enough technical support; (4) Changing the voting-machine software at the last minute.

We managed to make all of these mistakes, and more, which is why today, days later, we are still not 100 percent certain which candidates won on Tuesday. I would not completely rule out Pat Buchanan.

And so once again, South Florida is making life easy for Leno and Letterman. What is the solution? How can we avoid being international laughingstocks in the next election?

My suggestion -- call me crazy -- is that we print the ballot on paper, with a box next to each candidate's name. We instruct the voters to put an ''X'' in their candidate's box. Then we have human beings count the ``X''s, and the candidate with the most votes wins.

I realize this is a radical system, but I believe that it would be difficult for even South Floridians to screw it up.

We could get our elections over within a single day, like everybody else, and we would have more time to enjoy the pleasures of South Florida.

Such as scuba diving. On our new artificial reef.
Formed by 12,400 iVotronics.

http://www.miami.com/mld/miamiherald/living/columnists/dave_barry/4063529.htm

[Amaryllis]

1. This is FUNNY, you guys. Why is no one reading it?

[emlev]

2. When do we start building that reef? n/t

[Amaryllis]

4. LEt's add the reef to our list of reform activities.

[emlev]

6. Did you say election reef-form activities? n/t

[Amaryllis]

7. That was a real groaner, Em. Clever, though. :)

[loudsue]

3. LOL! Great read!

:woohoo: That was fun! :applause:

:kick::kick::kick:

[KoKo]

5. I can't get your link to work...want to send it to my Voting Reform pals..

is it me or the link. :shrug: