Voting…and the lack of privacy…
The York, Pennsylvania area where I live has always been the technological armpit of America, and I have never denied it. However, my precinct (Ward 4, Precinct 1) is even less cluefull than most.
I should start out by saying that this is the first election using the “new” touch-screen voting machines mandated by the federal government…you know, the ones where results can be altered by technological means, instead of the old mechanical devices where to steal an election someone had to actually falsify the paperwork? Thank you, Florida…because your election commissioners are idiots, the rest of us have to deal with less secure systems.
But anyway…we vote in a beautiful synagogue, where a large area is given over to the elections. But the new machines were set up in the same way, in the same positions the older machines (the ones with the big curtains to protect one’s voting privacy) were…at the closest machine, I was able to watch a woman make a selection on her screen while I stood at the registration table - no, I didn’t have my glasses on, so I couldn’t read the name she selected, and frankly I wouldn’t want to know anyway (the beauty of this system is that we are expected to cast our ballot in secret), but I shouldn’t have been able to see anything of her screen. That I could was a clear flaw in positioning the machines.
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