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...Even though the cute little punch card voting is gone now. Now we have touch screens. They're very shiny and colorful, yes, and I know people (like my aide's other client, Michael) who would find the touch screen system easier to work with than the punch card system. But I would still prefer to have a paper backup system.
If ATMs and the like can give you a paper reciept, why not your voting booth -- with the names clearly written out in black and white, so that anyone who could both read and count could double-check?
Speaking of double-checking: Our Democratic candidate for Governor soundly beat our Republican one, but the Republican (barely)won the Lt. Governor's post*. And as I'm typing this, we still don't know who won the Attorney General's post. Like the other two races, it was between a flaming liberal (and a reminder to you on my flist from across the pond, "liberal," here, means progressive left-winger) and a staunch conservative. The conservative, is of course, claiming victory. But when the margin is less than 2,000 when there were close to 200,000 votes cast, that makes a recount pretty reasonable.
Last night, I watched the coverage of the results on two seperate networks -- both local news teams. One team was falling apart at the seams, and could be heard muttering: "Oh for cri-- what do you want me to do about it?!" from off camera.
The other team was much more polished, and even had a "their own" political commentator. I wonder if this guy was a personal buddy of the station manager, or something, because his commentary was far from nuanced, or well reasoned. He did nothing to hide his astonishment that the Democrat won the Governor's seat, and that the other two ('extremely,' I think he said) liberal candidates came so close to winning anything at all. He concluded by saying something to the effect of: "After all, Virginia is a Republican state!" While that has been my general impression, during my 9 years here, I couldn't help thinking: "Well, obviously not, since we've now elected a Democratic governor two times in a row. Besides, it makes the Republicans look bad if they go around acting like they own the place."
*(Is that odd, for the Governor and Lt. Governor to run in completely different races? Or do they do that in other states, too?)
If ATMs and the like can give you a paper reciept, why not your voting booth -- with the names clearly written out in black and white, so that anyone who could both read and count could double-check?
Speaking of double-checking: Our Democratic candidate for Governor soundly beat our Republican one, but the Republican (barely)won the Lt. Governor's post*. And as I'm typing this, we still don't know who won the Attorney General's post. Like the other two races, it was between a flaming liberal (and a reminder to you on my flist from across the pond, "liberal," here, means progressive left-winger) and a staunch conservative. The conservative, is of course, claiming victory. But when the margin is less than 2,000 when there were close to 200,000 votes cast, that makes a recount pretty reasonable.
Last night, I watched the coverage of the results on two seperate networks -- both local news teams. One team was falling apart at the seams, and could be heard muttering: "Oh for cri-- what do you want me to do about it?!" from off camera.
The other team was much more polished, and even had a "their own" political commentator. I wonder if this guy was a personal buddy of the station manager, or something, because his commentary was far from nuanced, or well reasoned. He did nothing to hide his astonishment that the Democrat won the Governor's seat, and that the other two ('extremely,' I think he said) liberal candidates came so close to winning anything at all. He concluded by saying something to the effect of: "After all, Virginia is a Republican state!" While that has been my general impression, during my 9 years here, I couldn't help thinking: "Well, obviously not, since we've now elected a Democratic governor two times in a row. Besides, it makes the Republicans look bad if they go around acting like they own the place."
*(Is that odd, for the Governor and Lt. Governor to run in completely different races? Or do they do that in other states, too?)
