Despite the hope that technology could soon bring voting out of the age of paper ballots, it hasn’t really materialized in 2012. For starters, email proved to be problematic yesterday as New Jersey voters found issues with systems put together after Hurricane Sandy. Buzzfeed reports Essex County voters attempting to request ballots using an official email system often received bounce-backs stating the mailbox was full. Worse yet, Essex County Clerk Christopher Durkin proposed an alternative — sending the requests to his personal Hotmail address (cj_durkin@hotmail.com). Independent security researcher Ashkan Soltani tweeted his discovery that the account’s security question was set to Durkin’s mother’s maiden name, meaning a real risk of hackers intercepting the requests.
In Galveston, TX, workers neglected to start up computer systems in time for the 7 AM opening of the polls, resulting in delays of as long as two hours. A district court judge was forced to issue a court order extending voting until 8:54 PM to make up for the error.
In North Carolina, the Raleigh Telegram reports calibration issues with some of the touchscreen voting machines, which caused complaints of multiple attempts to select Mitt Romney resulting in Barack Obama’s selection instead. The Guilford County Register of Deeds, George Gilbert, points out that the machines are capable of making these errors in either direction and simply require regular recalibration, especially when under heavy use. Still, Gilbert reminded voters there were three opportunities to verify a vote, and “If you vote and never look at the screen, we can’t help you.”
Even automated phone dialers created problems yesterday morning in Pinellas County, Florida when a recording mistakenly instructed voters who requested ballots by mail that they had until Wednesday evening to turn them in. A second call was put out, telling people to disregard the first one.
Perhaps, for the time being, the voting process needs to be kept as basic as possible, and maybe it remains an area of life where computerization doesn’t provide a net benefit. As technology progresses, hopefully so will the dependability of its connection to such important events such as voting.
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