Several readers have submitted news of the inevitable problems involved with trying to securely collect information from tens of millions of people on the same day. A video is making the rounds of a touchscreen voting machine
registering a vote for Mitt Romney when Barack Obama was selected. A North Carolina newspaper is reporting that
votes for Romney are being switched to Obama. Voters are being encouraged to check and double-check that their votes are recorded accurately. In Ohio, some
recently-installed election software got a pass from a District Court Judge. In Galveston County, Texas, poll workers
didn't start their computer systems early enough to be ready for the opening of the polls, which led to a court order requiring the stations to be open for an extra two hours at night. Yesterday
we discussed how people in New Jersey who were displaced by the storm would be allowed to vote via email; not only are
some of the emails bouncing, but voters are being directed to
request ballots from a county clerk's personal Hotmail account. If only vote machines were
as secure as slot machines. Of course, there's still the good, old fashioned analog problems;
workers tampering with ballots, voters being told they can
vote tomorrow, and people leaving after excessively
long wait times.