[Fredslist] ODE TO OUR MISSING VOTING MACHINES

[Corey Bearak]

Funny
I prefer the old machines for the ease of taking the tally at end of the night.  You take results off the machines,  Now you have to wait for the scanners to print out tapes and reconcile results from ED/AD to create tallies.
As to voting, once I got past an incompetent election inspector who must have worked at an offshore call center because he kept asking voters for their postcard notifications so he could read simple names he could not discern aurally, I found an empty stand to mark my ballot and empty scanner to record my vote.  Parking also was difficult but that is fault of Education Department which chose the wrong school at which to host a professional development session.  My poll site hosted nine EDs and I saw six scanners.  There were only three scanners for the primary,



Corey B. Bearak, Esq.
Government & Public Affairs Counsel
Bearak at me.com
CoreyBearak.com
(718) 343-6779
Sent from my iPhone

On Nov 6, 2012, at 10:41 AM, Susan Zinder <sfzinder at aol.com> wrote:

Gotham – I voted – have you????? 

So... This morning at 9:00 am I went and stood on one line to get inside the polling place, another to get to the election district and a third to scan in my ballot -- -  Took a half hour and was more chaotic than I had ever seen it (2 of the 4 ballot scanners for over 10 election districts were broken)

I know I'm generally thought of as "liberal"  but when it comes to the subject of voting machines - - I'm not liberal, I'm not conservative, I'm downright reactionary!!!

I MISS THE VOTING MACHINES!!!!!!  You went in to the polling place, the line at the election district was shorter - there were 2 machines dedicated to the district -(not 4 scanners for 20 districts) - - Signed in at the election district (noticed that my original signature was legible and 25 years into legal practice my signature has just become illegible - -oiy I'm getting old!)

Oh - - look – that dad just took his son into the booth with him.

Then.... You walked into the voting booth - and booth it was not a table with metal on the sides to keep you from cheating on the exam, where there's no room to bring your child once their out of the sling or baby bjorn.  Heavy plastic curtains (oiy - they needed to be cleaned, but that only meant that they had seen a lot of voting over the years) You weren't filling in an SAT, PSAT or LSAT form - but you went into a booth with the candidates identified in front of you and next to levers, levers and more levers.

You took the big lever and pulled it to the right - - grrrrr - - it said I"m now ready to accept your vote - - and you voted - - - you didn't fill in blank ovals, you didn't press out chads - - you pressed the levers down - - physical, click was the sound - then you looked - did I press the correct levers?   Did I do it right - - wait, let me read that proposal, wait - I know I end up voting down a party line but that guy is on both party lines, for him I'll be bipartisan (unpress one lever, press the other)

Then check again - - did I do it right?  Hmmm.  

Oh, remember when I went into the voting booth with mom?  Fun mother  - daughter time.... OK, I'm taking too long here, want to leave time for my neighbors....

Time to pull the lever at the bottom from the right to the left.  Such a big lever -  so satisfying!  And the sound - it tells me - YOU HAVE VOTED CITIZEN ZINDER!!!! YEA FOR YOU!!!

Now… no sound, no acknowledgement, no receipt (at least when I scan my check in at the atm, they give me a picture of it) - - not really sure I should trust the guy who coded the scanner.

But… I still voted, and hope for the best for the country. So…. No more YEAs for me - -  It should only be yea for the country!!!

Susan

Susan Zinder

Law Offices of Susan F. Zinder, PLLC.
1140 Avenue of the Americas, 9th Floor
New York, New York 10036

(o) 646-380-6715
(c) 917-370-3369
szinder at zinderlaw.com

www.zinderlaw.com


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