guff

Tool doesn’t work well? Blame tool user

When voters attack (or at least complain):

Kim Griffith voted on Thursday—over and over and over…She went to Valle Del Norte Community Center in Albuquerque, planning to vote for John Kerry. “I pushed his name, but a green check mark appeared before President Bush’s name,” she said. Griffith erased the vote by touching the check mark at Bush’s name. That’s how a voter can alter a touch-screen ballot. She again tried to vote for Kerry, but the screen again said she had voted for Bush. The third time, the screen agreed that her vote should go to Kerry. She faced the same problem repeatedly as she filled out the rest of the ballot. On one item, “I had to vote five or six times,” she said.

(Thankfully this is not one of those “silly vote-stealing Republicans” issues.)

In Sandoval County, three Rio Rancho residents said they had a similar problem, with opposite results. They said a touch-screen machine switched their presidential votes from Bush to Kerry.

How do local election officials deal with an obvious problem like this? But of course:

Bernalillo County Clerk Mary Herrera said she doesn’t believe the touch-screen system has been making mistakes. It’s the fault of voters, she said Thursday. [Mike] Cadigan [president of Albuquerque's City Council, who reported similar problems using the machines], for example, could have “leaned his palm on the touch screen and it hit the wrong button,” she said…Bureau of Elections Manager Eddie Gutierrez also said he doesn’t believe there are problems with the machines.

So they’re not taking the complaints seriously. However, being a right old bastard with them still seems to cause a positive effect in our government:

But Gutierrez did replace one after someone complained—even though he found nothing wrong with it. “He (the voter) felt so strongly about it, that I shut it down,” Gutierrez said.

Anyway, I have a tiny concern with the officials’ view towards the primary objective in their line of work, which is to assure voters can vote, and that their vote goes to the candidate they intend it for. And perhaps to submit that vote without too much difficulty. The basic feature of a voting machine interface, or at least what SHOULD BE its basic feature, is ease and effectiveness of use. This goes for any tool meant for use by the general public. The harder it is for someone to accomplish a task the tool is provided for, the less effective it’s going to be. And it doesn’t matter if it works exactly as advertised.

Years ago when I was providing computer technical support for an ISP, I and my fellow support drones enjoyed wryly commenting on the wide-spread technical ineptness of members. I don’t think that will ever change. However, at the same time we cursed the technical designers and programmers for a serious lack of concern to how people, most of them untrained or inexperienced in the use of their wares, would end up using them.

Assuming Herrera and Gutierrez are correct and there’s nothing wrong with the machines, voters are still repeatedly screwing up their votes when using them. And it’s not just your Aunt Bernice accidentally wandered off from the home, but people like the Albuquerque City Council president. At the very least this should set off alarms, and not dismissive statements about the voters’ lack of skill at pressing touch-screen buttons. Leave such comments to us support folk. We’re better at it.