I voted early last week. It was on an electronic voting machine, and let me tell you how it works; with “it works” the operative phrase.
After you’ve signed in, and I’ll get to that part in a moment, you are provided an activation card — the size, shape and gauge of the standard credit card — the only data on which is the precinct identification, and a pencil with an erasure on both ends. The activation card merely sets the machine to ready, for the next vote. The system is touch-screen: touch the circle adjacent your choice for candidate and your “yes” or “no” election on the various initiatives to be decided.
Now that you’ve made all your choices, you next confront a screen that in very bold font reflects the choices you have made as well as any you have either neglected or opted not to vote on. The latter are in bright red. If you agree with what is shown on the monitor screen, you touch the screen to signify that you do. If not, you can go back to any selection to recast your vote.
Supposing you are at last in agreement with what the machine shows, you touch the screen to “cast your ballot.” As the machine is tallying your vote electronically, a paper ribbon, similar to what you receive from the cashier at the grocery market checkout, is also running; again in bold, large font, is running with your ballot choices clearly visible, so that you are assured that how you voted will be the results tabulated.
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This morning I attended the Washoe County poll worker training class. And I’ve got to tell you that I am just so damned delighted. Based on reports filtering in from other states, I was quite apprehensive that Republican efforts to purge and intimate voters might become a taint on the election.
I was most particularly worried about purges, challenges to a voter’s right to cast a ballot, be sent away with a provisional ballot.
The provisional ballot first: The only — let’s repeat that together: “the ONLY” — reason someone may be provided a provisional ballot is if he or she shows up at the wrong polling location and does not want to travel to the polling place to which they have been assigned. This would most likely happen if that voter arrives at 6:55 in the evening and either doesn’t feel they can get to their assigned polling place, or they just don’t want to bother going to the right place.
That’s IT!
Next I want to address challenges that could be used to disenfranchise a voter. It’s state law: The individual issuing the challenge must reside in the same precinct as the person they are challenging. Not the same precinct, “NO CHALLENGE.” Good bye Charlie Schmuck, get lost. Providing that the challenger does in fact reside in the same precinct, he or she must 1.) provide the poll manager with some form of state recognized photo ID, 2.) complete a “challenge form” that will include their home address, 3.) indicate the specific reason why they feel the voter ought not to be permitted to vote [identification, has voted in the election previously] and 4.) sign an “Oral Challenge Affirmation” affidavit.
As to required identification in Nevada; only in the instance that this is the voter’s first time to cast a ballot, or he or she has not cast one in the prior two general elections will identification be necessary. Identification may be any form of recognized photo ID, or upon the sworn affirmation of another adult, attesting that the prospective voter is in fact who he or she claims to be. Additionally, a mismatch that is likely the result of either the voter’s innocent error or the registrar’s office error — say for example, transposed spelling errors or address errors — will NOT result in disenfranchising the voter. Should there be some such error, the poll worker merely makes the necessary correction(s) on a separate form, a form that will be later used to update the voter roll, and the voter is then sent to the next available voting machine.
The overriding philosophy is to facilitate voting, and not in any fashion to discourage it. As Dan Burk, the county registrar of voters told the class, in his more than two decades experience, nowhere in the county has there occurred a challenge made that prevented the voter from casting a ballot then and there. Furthermore, again according to Mr. Burk, there has never, to his knowledge, occurred an instance of intentional voter fraud in Washoe County.
Man . . . if only the rest of the United States was this clean.
