the polls are closed in the east: did anyone vote in their state primaries today?

[chas_m]

I will only EVER vote with machines that generate a paper trail.

I voted in the primaries for our area, which were last week. Most but not all of the candidates I supported moved on to the next round.

I wish more people would vote in the primaries. Basically (at least around here) the only people who vote in the primaries are the diehards, idealogues and a handful of us "good citizens with a little leisure time on a workday."

We'd get better quality candidates if more people would take an interest in democracy.

[robfilms]

[quote chas_m]

We'd get better quality candidates if more people would take an interest in democracy.
though i disagree about your paper ballot thought, we do need to bow our heads to the gods of technology...

...i thoroghly agree on your notion of better candidates. the idea that we as a society have better things to do with our time than involve ourselves in the mundane exercise of "voting" is a dangerous attitude towards the privilege of democracy.

be well

rob

[M A V I C]

We have one candidate that believes it's bad for elected officials to have morals. Really scary.

[JoeH]

I agree with chas_m about the need for a paper trail. The votes need to be verifiable and auditable. Some of the current machines being pushed by makers don't provide this, and would not even meet the minimum requirements for these traits if used for business transactions. Unfortunately, in the rush to fix a system that had some problems, officials were sold on going for hi-tech machine solutions instead of actually focusing on the system. The machine is only part of a system, and can not substitute for the whole thing by itself. Going into what system problems need fixing starts getting into the other side of this forum though.

As for bowing our heads to technology, that is part of the problem here. Some of these new voting machines do not fit into a system that needs a verification and audit trail. It does not need to be a paper ballot, that is not what chas_m called for. For these machines there is too much of some tech and not enough of other tech to be appropriate for the system they are going to be used in. A simpler tech such as optical scan voting can sometimes be more appropriate because it fits into a system with auditing and verification. A black box that just show x voted for candidate A and y votes for B does not.

[Racer X]

[quote M A V I C]Dang, you had me trippin'. Ours isn't until next week.
I had to run upstairs and check my Absentee stuff too.