Ed Quillen of the Denver Post whines about his voting experience.
First he complains that in Chaffee County (Salida area) a Democrat rarely wins…
The 5th has never elected a Democrat in its 35 years of existence, and this one-party history provoked some talk among area Democrats. We have a fine candidate, Jay Fawcett, but he has no realistic chance of winning unless the Republican is caught in bed with a dead girl or live boy.
Oh “Cry Me a River” Ed. Good grief, like this is something special?? Boulder county is exactly opposite.
So Ed decides to vote anyway, after explaining that he doesn’t believe in switching parties, to try out the electronic voting machine. Oop’s, he gets the wrong ballot…
…thanks to the wonders of modern technology. On its first trial, the new electronic voting device gave me the wrong ballot.
That’s a legitimate problem, we’ll examine his conclusion in a moment, but first he takes a trip down memory lane, talking about the different voting environments he’s been exposed to. I guess that makes his criticism more legitimate. Now back to the Aug 8th primary and more whining…
The first element to dislike was the location. Like many other counties, Chaffee has moved to “vote centers” rather than the traditional precincts. The polling place for Precinct 2 is across the street from my house. The new vote center is four blocks away – thereby at least quintupling the amount of time and travel involved in getting to the polls.
FOUR whole blocks away, oh goodness gracious. My polling place was moved from about 2 miles from my house, an easy downhill coast, to about 8-10 miles from my house, apparently due to handicap access.
Oh and they wanted to see his Driver’s License. Cry me a river again. Now we’re coming to the juicy part…
I got my code number and some instructions – basically, this is not a touch screen, you have to turn the dial and press enter. After a short wait, I settled into my machine, punched in my code, and got the Republican ballot for Precinct 15 rather than the Democratic ballot for Precinct 2.
Being an honest guy, he informed the judge, got a new number and voted electronically. Once again he has to tell us how irrelevant his vote his. (Thanks Ed).
His conclusion about this experience…
And I gained some familiarity with the new electronic system. That is, I now have good reason not to trust it at all.
How does Ed know that the problem wasn’t human error? That would be my first conclusion.
