I am a volunteer election judge in Chicago, and in our primary last March we had the notorius Diebold machines in our precienct. Your correspondent is correct that it does make write-ins easier, as it displays a touchscreen keyboard you can type on. I don't remember if it had a hypen, but it was simpler than this selectwheel system. If course, people with little keyboard experience may have a problem. I should also point out that the Diebold machine also had an audio interface that used headphones. The one blind voter in our area said it was great, although it took a long time.

Here's my question, though: how do the varying jurisdictions handle mispellings? If you use a pencil you might forget to include the ladies's hyphen. What if you spell the first name Secula instead of Sekula? Do those count?

I thought the funniest unintentional joke of the Studio 60 premiere was during Judd Hirsch's rant, when he complained how the network was destroying art and cutting edge satire. Saturday Night Live was never art, nor was it cutting edge satire. Indeed, thoes few examples of actual cutting edge satire we might cite never did much except preach to the choir. Look back on Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, That Was The Week That Was, or any other satire you care to mention. They might be funny, but they never changed the world. The idea that they might is the satirist's favorite fantasy.

Well, I'm glad to see that legaleagle is trying to widen the appeal of the Democrats by calling their opponents "human trash". Nothing helps the Republicans more than seeing a progressive treat the proles like sub-humans if they don't obey the instructions of their betters.

Actually, the most important line in the piece is where Joe Trippi points out that you still have to find a candidate who will work out in the districts. He should know; Howard Dean was a ball-o'-fire on the Internet, but when put before actual, live voters he failed miserably. Of course, sometimes you have to take a longer view. Robinson might not win, but the database of his supporters names is worth gold. These folk may not have much money, individually, but unlike progressives they actually are willing to work for a cause they support (rather than demanding that the human trash follow orders).

On Tuesday I will be an election judge in Chicago for the 3rd time. Our training is slightly better than the one described in the story. We use mostly optical-scan paper ballots, but each polling station has one Sequoia machine, which generates a paper tape copy in a sealed cassette. This machine is there mostly for blind voters (we have one in my precinct), and we do know how to set it up.

However, the general view of the author is pretty much on target. Judges are volunteers without much training, and voting rules are arcane and old-fashioned. Each rule was instituted to avoid a problem in the past, like inserting pre-filled ballots or reuse of IDs. The election board is made up of bored civil servants and lower-level local politicians who couldn't get a job in private business.

The upshot of this is that most modern election conspiracy theories fall apart when confronted by the general amateurishness of the process. Instead of Republican hackers in an underground bunker inserting trapdoors in the code, the election system is run by 70-year old grandmothers who feed ballots to local officials who don't even have e-mail. The entire system is so radically decentralized and run with such minimal competance that the idea of making tiny changes to tip Federal elections is absurd. Local officials are far more interested in local races, and there is no incentive for them to tamper with the larger ones. There is no plausible motivation for the local people to interfere, and there are no obvious places to hook into the system and subvert it.

If you want to help your fellow citizens have free and fair elections, become a judge for the next election. We need tech-savvy, energetic people to help. Its a long day and sometimes frustrating, but it will give you an unparalleled view into how elections are actually run. The problem isn't dishonesty, its neglect.