Election Nostalgia

I miss the old paper punch ballots. The new system here in the People’s Republic of California is really stupid. They give you a huge, scan-tron like sheet with all the candidates and propositions listed, and you use a pen to fill in the bubble next to your choice. Then you insert the form into a big electronic suitcase, which then does… something. Perhaps the election fairies tally up your votes. I know they don’t get counted till later in the evening. If we’re going to go through all the trouble of using paper ballots that won’t even be counted till later, we might as well use the old punch method. It was moderately cheaper, and you got to use a sharp object to poke holes in something. I know that the punch method was supposedly more prone to voter error (or at least alleged to be by the Donks in 2000), but really, if you can’t master something as simple as the paper punch ballot, you’re really not the kind of person who I would want to have voting anyway. Stick with American Idol, and leave the real elections to the grown ups.