Voter Complaints

On MichaelMoore.com, I saw one of the many voter complaints, from my county, in which someone claimed that our voting machines didn't tell people to submit their votes. I responded, and they apparently removed the initial complaint.

I note this to say hey, good for them for removing it, and also, don't believe everything you read on sites like this. Take it all with a grain of salt. Here's what I wrote, FWIW:

Someone else reported problems with voting machines in Snohomish County. I have used these machines thrice, once in the summer registering voters (we had a demo), and once in the primary itself, and once today.

I agree the machines are a bit difficult to use, but cannot agree that the users are not told to submit the final results. The way these machines -- from Sequoia -- work, is that you are given options, you select your choices, and then you select the big yellow NEXT button at the bottom (or BACK, to go back).

You keep hitting NEXT and making choices until the choices are all done. You see a page with all your choices, and then two more big yellow BACK and NEXT buttons. You are directed to select a choice to change it. When you hit NEXT, you then are told one last time, hit SUBMIT or hit REVIEW to go back and make changes. You do that, and you are done, and your voting card ejects.

Even if someone sees the list of choices and does not see the same big yellow NEXT button they've hit several times already to get to this point, the voting machine cannot be used until the process is finished and the voting card is ejected (unless a voting worker overrides it and cancels out the whole process), so if someone leaves before completely finishing, the voting worker just needs to hit NEXT and SUBMIT to finish it.

Again, it may not be ideal, but it is not as bad as the other user made it sound. And it's the same systems in use nationwide by anyone who uses Sequoia, so it's not some Snohomish County plot (and we have a far left liberal Democrat Conrgessman representing us here, Rick Larsen, so I don't know why they think we are a bastion of Republicanism).