I live in a small town in rural central Wisconsin. I've been here for 11 years, and it's a nice place, though not particularly modern. Indeed, when I voted here for the first time in 1995, I was surprised to find a vestige of a past I'd only heard about or seen in the movies. Voting was still done with paper ballots, with people putting their X's on a line or in a box while standing behind a curtain.
All the problems with butterfly ballots, hanging chads, touch screens -- yes, they were bad, and they probably cost two good men the Presidency (and who knows how many good people lost lower office because of them). But they were someone else's problem. We here still had the relatively foolproof paper ballots.
Well, the so-called "Help America Vote Act" came to the boonies with today's Wisconsin primary. And based on my admittedly unscientific look as I cast my first electronic ballot today, Wisconsin just might be doing it right.
I was surprised to find a line at my local polling place at the village hall. It wasn't an indicator of higher than normal turnout, but instead it was a sign that some people hadn't registered.
Wisconsin, to its credit, has always allowed registration on the day of an election at the polling place, and it still does. This time, though, if you weren't on the rolls, you had to fill out a registration form. My small village had always been pretty lenient about that; the seniors working the poll knew most of the town regulars, and the strangers just had to show a driver's license or utility bill, or if you looked trustworthy they took your word that you lived here. I didn't know if I was on the registered voter list or not; in retrospect, I should have figured that I was, because I got calls and mail from several of the local Democrats running for office.
Having cleared that hurdle (almost literally; two seniors who had to register were blocking the way to the next table and it took a couple "excuse me, I'd like to vote now"s to get past them), I went to the table where the poll workers would mark that I voted.
I saw only one touch-screen voting station. But I also saw the usual voting booths with the curtains. What a quaint, and brilliant, idea: Voters had the option of casting either an electronic ballot or a paper ballot!
One person in front of me chose to vote with the paper ballots -- "I'm not good with computers," she said. The man in front of me also chose to vote manually, which caught the poll worker off guard because he said he wanted to vote "manually" and not with a "paper ballot." Several people had a good-hearted chuckle about that, including the poll worker once she realized what he meant. I asked, just to be sure, when I was asked the voting equivalent of "paper or plastic?" if there was a paper trail. Yes, there was, I was assured.
That's the way it was supposed to be, by the way. When the Wisconsin Legislature approved touch-screen voting, it made two provisions that every other state should, too: First, every machine had to have a paper printout of exactly how the person voted that the voter could check before leaving the polling place. And second, in the event of a recount, the paper printout was the official voting record, not the machine tally.
But again, having the option of voting either the old way or the new way was brilliant. It sped up the lines, and people who were intimidated by the machine could vote the old familiar way.
I patiently waited in a three-person line to cast my ballot. The worker in charge of the machine was well trained; I could hear her explain what to do with each person. Finally, it was my turn.
This morning, the newscast on Wisconsin Public Radio emphasized that, in keeping with long-standing Wisconsin tradition, a voter could only vote in one party's primary. It didn't matter which party, but a ballot with, say, Republican votes for attorney general and Democratic votes for U.S. House of Representatives would be completely thrown out. The touch-screen voting made it impossible to mess up.
The first question on the screen asked in which party's primary I wished to vote. Once I chose "Democratic," only the Democratic options came up.
I've done touch screens in other places, such as library kiosks, so the casting of the ballot was easy. I already knew who I was voting for; it was just a matter of finding the names. When I was done each screen, there was a "Next" button at the bottom, and it took me to the next slate of offices.
When I was done, the screen showed me for whom I had cast my votes. It then asked me if that was indeed who I was voting for. It threw me at first, because the screen also said that I had not voted for every office that I could have; unfortunately, many local offices in this heavily Republican area had no Democrats in the primary. I guess I could have tested the machine's "write-in" function; I was told that a keypad would appear on screen if I chose to write someone in, and I then could use it to type in the person's name.
Satisfied that I was done, I pushed the button to continue. And to my left, a paper printout of exactly the same people as on my screen as my choices appeared. The printout was on a roll, like an internal cash register tally. "The one thing I don't like is how long the printout takes to appear," the worker said. Actually, it only seemed as if it took a long time; it took no longer than if it were coming out of an inkjet printer. It could seem like an eternity if there was a long line. But if there had been a long line, the voters could have been steered to the tried-and-true paper ballot curtains instead.
I don't know who made the voting machine, but it seemed to be well designed; there was no way the poll worker could tell who you voted for. I as a voter felt as if I had privacy, as the screen was turned away from the line; no one except me could see my votes.
When I approved my printout and hit "Cast Vote" or "Finish," or whatever the machine's prompt was to roll the paper out of the way for the next voter, I felt satisfied with the process, and I left the voting booth.
Of course, this was only one person's experience over a 10-minute period (at most). As machines do, it could break down, or the paper could jam, or the printer could run out of ink, or it could otherwise decide to stop working. But I do know that should that happen, residents of my village can still vote, because they have the paper-ballot option. What a quaint, and brilliant, idea!