# The Solution to Voting Problems in the States?

**[Doc Farmer](http://www.chronwatch.com/site_search.asp?auth=90)\
**

**       **Ah, Florida.  The Sunshine State.  Or, at least, that used to
be the Floridian motto.  Nowadays, it seems to have shifted to
\'\'Florida\--We\'re Too Dumb to Know How to Vote.\'\'

 

       Now, before I get a bunch of angry e-mail messages from retirees,
orange farmers, and Mouseketeers, please understand something.  I
*[know]{.underline}* it\'s not you\'re fault.  The hanging chads, the
endless courtroom dramas, the attempted re-writing of election law by
SCOFLA (is that an appropriate acronym or what\--just say it out loud,
and marvel at what it sounds like\...), are NOT the fault of the average
man or woman on the street.  It was politics.  Plain, simple, corrupt
politics.

 

      Well, Election 2000 came and went, and there was a great hue and
cry for a better, more accurate way to vote.  So Florida politicians,
always eager to spend (your) money, decided on a nifty, neato-torpedo
new electronic voting system.  They blew millions on it.  They had
training sessions, they did mock votes, test votes, and everything was
looking both hunky and dory.

 

       That is, until Primary Election Day 2002.

 

       On that fateful day, the long-fanged serpent of politics reared
its ugly head again, and we ended up with complaints, machines that the
polling officers couldn\'t (or wouldn\'t) start up properly, delays,
miscounts, the list goes on and on.  And who gets blamed?  The politicos
who were trying to screw with the results (again)?  Nope.  It was the
ordinary, hardworking (or retired) Floridian.  I mean, Janet wanted to
pull an AlGore on you guys again, and you get the shaft for it?  Unfair,
I cry!

 

       Now we\'ve got Campaign 2004/Decision 2004/Election 2004/Screw-Up
2004 in full swing, which means we\'re only 18 months away from yet
ANOTHER electoral nightmare.  The lib/dem/soc/commies are already
trotting out their candidates (note to DNC: to comply with truth in
advertising laws, please consider changing your campaign theme song to
\"Send in the Clowns\") and they\'re having debates and photo-ops and
all kinds of activities meant to badmouth Dubya.  They want their chance
to win in the next election, and they\'re no doubt devising even more
complicated ways to cast and count ballots.

 

       However, there\'s a very simple solution to the voting problems
in Florida, and across most of the nation.  And it\'s not expensive at
all.  The equipment is already available, it\'s secure, it\'s reliable,
and it is familiar to all.

 

       It\'s the Lottery.

 

       Lottery machines are a ubiquitous part of our lives.  Almost
every state has a lottery of some form or another.  And it\'s pretty
simple.  You take your slip of paper, you use a pencil or pen to fill in
five or six spaces, you hand the slip to the clerk, they feed it to the
machine, you get a ticket, and you\'re one step closer to your
14-squillion to one chance of being rich.  Kids can do it (although, by
law, they\'re not supposed to).  My mom can do it (provided she\'s
wearing her glasses).  And Mom, although I love her dearly, isn\'t what
you\'d call mechanically inclined.  She\'s dangerous with a can-opener,
for pity\'s sake.  But she can fill out a lottery form.

 

       So why not use them to vote?

 

       It\'s quite simple, really.  Each voter would need to get a small
voter registration card, with a bit of bar code or whatever it is the
lottery machines can read when you win.  On Election Day, you would go
to any gas station, convenience store, supermarket, etc., that had a
lottery machine.  You\'d fill out your slip, you hand it to the clerk,
the clerk puts the slip in the machine.  If you voted correctly, the
machine would beep and ask for your voter registration card to verify
your vote.  If you made a mistake, the lottery machine would print out
the errors you made and you\'d get a chance to correct them.

 

       Once your vote was verified, the lottery machine would then print
out two slips.  One would be for you, with your receipt of voting.  The
other would go into a sealed container.  Your voting slip (the one that
went into the lottery machine) would go into a separate sealed
container.

 

       To ensure a secret ballot, your votes would go into one secured
file, and the fact that you voted would go into another separate file. 
This separate file would be used to ensure that you didn\'t follow the
old Chicago rule (\'\'vote early, vote often\'\').  If you tried to vote
too often, you\'d get a nice knock on the door from the vote fraud
police.  If you were just absent-minded and forgot you voted earlier in
the day, however, you wouldn\'t be in any trouble.

 

       You\'d be able to vote anywhere in the state, not just at a
pre-defined polling station.  On your way to work, at lunch, while
getting groceries or gas or whatever.  None of the hassle, and none of
the politicking either.  And since lottery machines are very easy to
operate, none of the crapola you get from \'\'confused\'\' polling
officers.  You\'d also have the advantage of cutting down on dead people
voting.  And the folks in jail might have a hard time getting to the
local 7-Eleven to vote.  Besides, if they do get there, they\'d probably
be too busy robbing the place to vote anyway\...

 

       Lottery systems are designed to be secure, and there are plenty
of safeguards built into them to prevent tampering.  Programming them to
read votes would be very easy.  Creating a voters guide would be equally
simple.  If you want candidate ***A***, fill in number 1.  For candidate
***B***, fill in number 2.  Et cetera.  No butterfly ballots, no
confusion.

 

        And the system, being electronic, would be able to compile the
votes very quickly.  You wouldn\'t have to wait for individual polling
stations to send in returns, because they already did the very moment
you voted.  There wouldn\'t be any confusion about where you voted from,
either, because the votes would be cast on a statewide basis.  Now, if
you lived in a town that was having a mayoral vote, you could
participate even if you were out of town that day.  And the system,
because of your voter registration card, would make sure that you were
voting only on those items you were eligible to participate in.

 

        Plus, with all of the money that the state would\'ve saved using
this voting system, they could provide an added incentive to try and
counter voter apathy.  If you voted, you\'d be entered into a drawing. 
After the polls closed (late enough, hopefully, to allow everybody to
get home before Dan Rather announced a winner prematurely, that is), the
computer file that had a record of all the voters would randomly select
people to win money.  A thousand voters would get \$1,000 each, a
hundred would get \$10,000, ten would get \$100,000 and one voter would
get a cool \$1 million.  Tax-free.  Paid for by all that lottery money
you already lost earlier in the year\...

 

       Who knows?  With a system like that, perhaps people would
actually start to look **[FORWARD]{.underline}** to Election Day!