I voted today in Missouri (District 3). There were only four electronic voting machines. When I went to register and show my ID, I was told there was a long wait for the electronic machines, or I could take a paper ballot. I took the paper ballot. There was a table with partitions set up, but they were all being used. Most people just wandered around the polling place with their ballots. They often sat on outlying benches or seats to fill out the ballots. I even heard one couple discussing their votes as they were voting!
Where was the monitoring? Why would I be allowed to just wander around with my ballot in hand? The poll workers were registering people or milling about, but there was nothing stopping me from talking to other voters while they voted, to influence them, or to tamper with the vote in other ways. I was feeling particularly concerned about this after watching Hacking Democracy
I have to agree with Bill Maher that we're no longer a country that can get things done. Why can't we have a concerted national effort to regulate and oversee the voting process? Aside from the problems with Diebold, both technical and partisan, why are we allowing voting to be privatized? Is it really acceptable for a private business to have that much control over our votes?
I was watching CNN, and a Democratic strategist (forgive me, I forget who) talked about how Democrats have repeatedly brought legislation that would allocate some federal resources to help local government run elections, and yet, Republicans have continued to block this. Shouldn't we have more resources to improve polling places? So many stories of ill-trained or incompetent poll workers, or of corruptible machines, or of amazingly long lines, and yet few seem to think this is a big enough problem to address.
There must be a better way of doing this.