Voted early
Tuesday Oct 21, 2008
I checked out my county's elections web site, and discovered I could vote early a few places near home, and one quite close to my route to work. So I stopped by this morning on my way in to Sun Austin and voted.
The polling place was doing steady business, and kept the four people checking voter registrations busy during the time I was there and paying attention. When I left it had slowed a bit, but it was heartening to see the business they were doing.
Our county used electronic voting machines (they even called them "computers", which they are, of course) that allow you to select the precinct and ballot style. One of the poll judges was there to help get that done, and go through an optional demonstration for those who hadn't used the machines or needed a review. I hadn't used the machine before (I wanted a paper ballot last time I early voted) but I figured out I could work it out, which turned out to be true.
The machines have a touch screen, and touching a candidates name in a race selects, touching it again deselects. I didn't actually have to change any of my votes, but I assume if you've selected one candidate and touch another the selection would change, or perhaps pop up a question asking whether you want to change.
After I finished selecting my choices, I was given the option to review. In some races I had not voted, as their was only one selection, in all cases for the locally predominant party, and I didn't care to give them a free vote. These were highlighted. When I got to the last page of the review the "Vote" button on top of the machine was highlighted and I hit it. The machine gave me a last chance to re-review and noted I had not selected a vote in some races. I said go ahead and complete my vote, and I was done.
Overall, a good experience. In the past I've worried about the security of these systems, and while I still do, I've come to look at this in a more historical perspective. Vote fraud can happen with paper ballot boxes or electronic voting machines, though I think we need to work on making this more detectable in the electronic case. I trust the local election officials to do the right thing, as I have no reason to believe they won't.
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