The latest glitch in the California recall election is enough to alarm any voter. People who came to the polls in San Fernando Valley were informed that they had already voted, and therefore couldn’t vote again. Turned out they actually hadn’t voted—it was just a malfunction of a voting machine. Consequently, they were given provisional ballets. Oh, this is so scary. Anything could happen to provisional ballets. They might be disqualified, or even thrown in the waste basket. As a result of this debacle, everyone is wondering: Should voters trust machines?
The integrity of our voting process has always been fragile. My first year out of college, I had a roommate who was a volunteer at a voting site on the South Side of Chicago. I think her father was a big wheel in the Republican party in downstate Illinois. Therefore, she was more involved with politics than anyone I had ever known at that age.
This was the year that Kennedy was elected in a very narrow victory over Nixon. That evening, Carol came home from her stint in a snit. Seems bottles of whiskey were being passed out to folks who voted they way they were told. The story of Joe Kennedy stealing the election in Illinois is pretty much accepted as history nowadays. But at the time, the public was too naïve to think anyone could get away with such blatant bribery and election rigging. Supposedly, you can’t give food and drink to people waiting in line to vote. But apparently they did this year in certain cities.
People shouldn’t have to stand in long line lines to vote. I wouldn’t vote at all, if that were the case. Because I’m retired, I can go to the polls at a convenient time, but not everyone can. I’m pretty much okay with mail in ballots, as long as they’re verified with a voter ID. Signature matching? I dunno. A lot of young people don’t sign their name in cursive. They just scribble a few lines to represent their signature. Cursive isn’t even taught in some schools.
As a matter of fact, I believe we’re way too reliant on computers to do the counting. As the saying goes, there’s many a slip between the cup and the lip. My pc messes up a lot. Push the wrong button, and the results are totally skewed. And since they have to do hand recounts on close elections, it seems to me they may as well do hand counts to begin with. Should voters trust machines? Let’s take the time to get it right, and restore faith in the voting system