primary primary

I voted in my first primary election today, having finally joined a party! Wahoo!

I realized today as I was voting that there is a very interesting phenomenon occurring in the voting machine situation these days. Yes, there is a lot of controversy over the electronic voting, but that's not what I'm talking about. What I find most intriguing is how people are instructed to vote.

When I walked into my first voting booth about a decade ago, everything was on those manual machines where one got to slide over little tabs and then when all finished making selections push some magic button or pull some lever. I recall being entirely freaked out by the whole thing. To this day I still am uncomfortable with the whole deal. I'm never quite sure if I'm sliding over the correct tab and if I've gone through all of the different categories. It totally stresses me out, and it actually makes me very less inclined to go out and vote if I know the monster machine is waiting for me.

On the other hand, I find the electronic, touch-screen voting machines in my current district to be entirely simple to use. It tells me exactly what to do: touch where I want...review when I'm done...push "VOTE"...poof, it's over! I've never had any doubt about how to use the thing.

However, it's astounding to me how uncomfortable so many people are with this option. Not in the anonymity or the accuracy of tabulation - just the very fact of using a computerized method for making selections. I was in and out of the voting place in about 30 seconds today, whereas the lady who had started before me was still laboring over the thing when I left. Perhaps she was having trouble deciding between various candidates, but from what I've gathered it seems like most people are more affected not by indecision but by incompetence in utilizing the voting apparatus.

What is most striking to me is that when I get to the voting place these days, a nice man tells me exactly how to go through the voting process. He tells me exactly what to do with the touch scree. There's even a tutorial if I don't get it. I totally ignore everything he says to me as well as the tutorial, because to me it's like "DUH...this is not rocket science, people!"

As I was daydreaming through the nice man's spiel today it struck me that I would have really appreciated such instruction on the manual machines. Why didn't anyone ever include that as standard voting protocol?? And then I realized that all the people I see having issue getting through the touch screen are at least 20 years older than I am and are entirely used to the manual system. They did not spend the majority of their lives doing everyday tasks with computers. By the time I reached voting age, they had been using the manual machines for years and years, and just as I think it's ridiculous to tell people how to push buttons on a self-explanatory screen, nobody apparently thought that it might be necessary to inform new voters of how to use to presumably idiot-proof manual voting system. Well...they, IMHO, were wrong.

I got a call (okay...a recorded message) yesterday from Barack Obama, and I was impressed that he said, "If you need a ride or want to learn how to use a voting machine, call blah-blah-blah." It made me realize that there are a LOT of people out there who face many impediments to being able to vote. Whether is unfamiliarity with computers, fear of big huge tab-filled machines, a family full of under-five-year-old kids, no car to get you to the school where voting occurs that is located up the gigantic (and I do mean GIGANTIC) hill that no bus system would ever route a line, or something else, it's no wonder that so few Americans who have the opportunity and liberty to participate in a democratic government actually exercise their right to vote. I feel that the Obama campaign, despite all the criticism it's gotten as being "elitist," has been extraordinarily aware of many of these hindrances, which often affect the most non-elite in the country. I'm glad that somebody has finally made some effort to bridge this gap in "equal voting rights."