i'm michael r jackson very honest i'm on my way to the grand opening of what i consider to be the greatest show on earth first time it's played our county but we think when the curtain closes tonight this will be quite a different place to live i have a little something to do with it that is a man i wrote about in a series of news stories the county courthouse and if you know anything about the county courthouse well that's democracy showplace i don't have any free press passes for you but you can get a good seat if your credentials say you stay there probably gives it away when we announce without a there are plenty of he's not necessarily the star in this particular show i like to say is but it wouldn't be quite true in this case the stage of this show is that voting machine right there and the theme getting them installed in this county it didn't just happen you see you can legislate yourself all the laws you want about the right to vote but whether you actually have an active electorate are not comes down like everything else of consequence through a matter of action on the part of a very few men and what kind of arrangements they make and your community and maybe some other official like your councilman in ours it's the county commissioners who carried the assignment of seeing that there is a way and a means for every american to run his country between six a m and six p m on that first tuesday in november now all the voting machines are over sixty years old and already being used by about half the voters in america are commissioners still had to sell the idea here a lot of work but they felt worth doing they got me on their team to do my series of articles when commissioner miller told me about the ease and speed in the economy of voting with machines over paper ballot when the border is properly qualified the attending election official admits into the machine mr citizen moves the operating lever to the right which i'm locks the machine and locks out the world for the first time the secret ballot is really secret and there are over nineteen and one half centuries that i know of invested in achieving just that the voters liked his candidates by turning down the voting pointers directly above the names of his candidates then a recurrence and counts his own vote by returning the operating handle to the left that's all there is to it he does not hand any papers to any human being his vote is made and cast on untouched by other human hands or minds and that's a long step up from tyranny no candidate suffers by being placed in an unfavorable position the commissioner run over service clubs all over the county won every address them by reminding them of the large number of voters who are disenfranchised every year at the paper ballots typos by making mistakes dizzy people by habit make check marks on the ballot in states where x s are required they might as well of stayed home that vote is a no vote doesn't count illegal other voters find that at the last minute they have accidentally voted for the wrong man or they change their mind or in the multiple choice offices errors of frequent she's entitled to choose five state represent but jeez mark si this is a noble simple mistake but out of every thousand people some hurried some nervous some uninformed how many do you think do it perfectly the commissioner figure there's some excuse for being disenfranchised by tehrani or war or fear oh yes it can happen here but not for well intentioned mistakes not in this age of the voting machine which cannot make a check mark instead of an x which does let you change your mind by simply pushing the pointer back which has no pencil to break or paper to take care which will not let you vote for a mirror then you're allowed the party will not turn if you cast all your and no or for and against the machine won't let you spoil your ballot by voting both way and when you're satisfied with your approved new privilege awaits you you will register and count your own rule by returning this handle rockall a knowing your ballot cannot be day looks complex but it's not a complex mechanical action that looks because of the large number of units in it but actually each voting assembly has a straight mechanical linkage and of course voting machines are not a new idea many new functions have been added of course but basically they are twelve years older than the automobile eighteen ninety two their use has steadily increased until last year in commissioner and the first answer was it's so fast and so easy just three simple steps first the red operating handled to the right second absolute secret we've had no trouble about that in this county but we don't want it either the commissioners understood about fear that it's a very very subtle thing this opinion is in the machine on any piece of paper which passes from hand to hand the machine the automatic voting machine absolutely eliminate the disenfranchisement which comes from mistakes ballots mutilations checks instead of axes erasers are venting for too many candidate on machines every vote that cast is counted the count is mechanically accurate and of course of interest to me and well one hundred seventy million others i guess is the fact that immediately after the last  the election results are available these counters cannot be expressed during the voting day exposure automatically locks the machine against further voting but once opened the result is available right now my paper  the results which means the people and the candidates in the radio and t v stations can get the results earlier just read the figures after the counters to the recorders then check the recorded figures back against the counters announce the results in five to ten minutes about the good old days well then it was five days but the mechanical counters cannot get tired cannot get cranky cannot forget voting machines well money running machines vote more people much faster therefore you can consolidate your precinct sometimes even two for one cuts in half your need for hard to find election workers madison wisconsin for example eliminated one hundred seventy election workers and multiply one hundred it's seventy by a day's pay and you see what kind of savings we're talking about plus accounting takes a quarter of an hour as opposed to three to six hours fewer people fewer hours equals fewer dollars not always of course but in our type yes then take your printing costs paper ballots require at least one ballot for every rot money wasn't chiefly on the commissioner's mind something else the man who took the lead in it is a seasoned professional career politician realistic tough even unemotional but that's why he knew that democracy as an idea and a practice had to compete in this county like everything else for the respect and attention of our people who are pressing the clock hard every day it has to compete against speed in motion regrettably even against america's second gap of graphic everything else in the county competes hard for the citizens increasingly valuable time churches were modernizing with parking lots they could get into  faster marketplaces were automating to compete for his time and his dollar our schools modernized to command his respect than his tax dollars the tools which our average citizen uses every day in his job of work has become fantastically automatic and fast as industry