Cuppacafe

Instead of the innumerable opportunities to vote early, I chose to vote today on Election Day, and I was not disappointed. Why?

I got to vote twice. Kind of.

Here in Texas, we use the E-Slate system, which uses a central recording device for a bunch of dumb terminals. Alison and I got in line 30 minutes early, numbers 18 and 19 in line, respectively. Alison voted with no problem, with me voting in the next booth over. The line was about 70 people long when we first entered, so probably about a 40 minute wait. Well, until Alison voted. Because of the initial sign in processing, I'm about a minute behind her in voting, and as she finished and walked out, something happened.

The central E-Slate machine froze. The precinct judge ended up having to reboot it, which meant that all the people who were in the middle of voting had to vote again. As this process was happening, I finish up my voting, and hit CAST BALLOT and, while the American flag comes up at the end, at the top was the ominous message: TRYING TO RECONNECT. Some of the poll workers said, "Oh, if you see the flag at the end, the vote was registered, you can go." Uh, no, not so much. While that little slave E-Slate voting device has a memory, the votes inside waiting to go to the main machine aren't valid if the main machine has been rebooted.

The Precinct Judge knew this, but he was busy on the phone with voting help, confirming his steps to reconnect. I've done this when I ran a Democratic primary, but I never had to help people revote due to a voting glitch. So, those of us voting were patient, and reverified who we were, and got new codes to use in the voting booth, giving up our previous voting codes which were no longer valid.

So, I voted for a second time, and all is well with the world!

Meanwhile, go vote if you haven't.

Just in case any of the net-buzz that has been going on here on this blog (or in the real world) regarding the upcoming Presidential election, or the on-going financial crisis, or even the War(s) that we are fighting around the world. I, personally am encouraging you all to vote. I don’t think that any election of the modern age is more important than the one happening this November.

Thing is, to vote, you have to be registered. If you are not registered, and you want to register, you can do it on online.

It’s time to make a difference.

The Perfessor