Keep Voting Ponderous

Here's the next-to-final draft of a commentary that ran on NPR's All Things Considered on Monday. You can listen to it here.

I'm double worried about electronic voting machines. First there's the problem that lots of people have noted with the new machines. Instead of marking a box with a pen, you touch the screen to put an electronic mark in an electronic box. Very convenient and results are tabulated instantly, but suppose there's a bug in the computer, or suppose someone hacks into them. How would we even know that the software is miscounting the votes?

The most talked-about solution is to have the electronic voting machines also produce a paper copy of your vote so you can compare it with what you touched on screen. The paper copies would be kept secure so they can be counted manually to verify the electronic results...which makes sense to me.

But even if all the technical issues are resolved, I'm not going to like voting with the new digital machines. I'm voting because I want to make a difference. A little difference, exactly one person's worth. So I want my vote to make a mark in the world. I want to make a thick X in smelly magic marker ink where there wasn't one before. I want to feel a lever click into place. I want to punch some chads. That's what making your mind up feels like. Touching a computer screen is a little too literally doing my "bit."

Of course I don't want Florida to happen again. No one does. And I'm enough of a combination news and computer junkie to want election results within 4 seconds of the polls closing. But I'd be willing to give that up if it meant I could savor my role as a citizen longer.

You know, I not only want to make a mark on paper, I want to wait in line at the polls. The line should be long, and not only because that means lots of us are voting. The inconvenience reminds us that voting is worth waiting for. Besides, the line puts in front of me and behind me people who disagree with me. Yet right or wrong, we all get to stand in the same line. No matter how much we disagree about the future direction of our country, everyone in line agrees on this: People who cut in line stink! That's the basis of civil society.

And it should be drizzling on election day. And a little cold. Hands in pockets cold, not glove cold. We should be dusting the outside off our coats and stamping it off our feet as we enter the polling place because, although voting is an indoor activity, we should be reminded of the reality of the world outside, especially as voting goes digital.

So, yes, I bow before the inevitable. I'll probably be poking my finger at a touch screen and, I hope, checking the results against a paper print out. I may even glance sideways at the screen to see which names have the most accumulated fingerprints next to them. That's how badly I want to know the outcome. But I'm afraid I'm going to feel more like I'm recording information about my vote than actually voting. Casting a ballot is the fundamental, irrevocable act of democracy. I'm voting to have an effect. It'd be nice to be able to feel the effect.