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Termyn8or -> RE: Record numbers of people voting early (10/24/2008 9:01:35 AM)
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I don't think it's just the lines. After what happened in FL in 2004 people are not only skeptical about the accuracy of the voting machines, some believe that there was outright fraud.
This may or may not be true, but I think vote fraud is a good possibility, and could happen again. True or not, I believe that is some people's perception. However untrue vote fraud may be, there have been quite a few reports of problems with voting machines. The lack of a paper trail has been criticized quite a bit, and I think some remember.
Of course some don't, some will walk in there and use machines they have never seen before (there were changes made after 2004) and hope they got it right this time. They don't realize that the problems with voting machines were greater than say in ATM machines by orders of magnitude. Some people use an ATM almost every day and never have a problem, some have a problem once, or even once a year if that. The ATM machines are very accurate, they know if you overdraw by a dollar, of course then they have you by the short hairs. True errors are very rare in that system.
Simple math will not perform an effective argument. The entire electronic banking system is quite secure and it could be argued that because of the sheer number of people using the voting machines on one given day artificially inflates the error rate, or at least the perception of the error rate. On top of ATM machines, electronic banking works many times a day for some, especially bank to bank and foreign transactions.
There have also been some serious allegations made against the software companies which programmed the voting machines. Perhaps only allegations, but there are those who remember them, thus the trend.
Don't forget, you can vote (in most places I think) by mail if you choose for any number of reasons. My Father voted by mail because he's pushing seventy (less than a month) and would have trouble standing in a long line. Some literally can't get off work, a poll worker comes to mind having been mentioned, but there are other jobs, such as firemen. How would you like to see your local firemen in line with you at the poles and then go home to a pile of ashes ? EMT workers, there are plenty of good reasons. Being a celebrity or politician (is there that much difference these days ?) would be a valid reason as well.
Therefore to me, this trend is not surprising at all.
T
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