lance_sibley | For my American friends.

Snagged from

Dear United States of America,

The headlines are full of articles noting that your electronic voting machines have been giving all kinds of problems today, during your "mid-term elections".

Since many of you like to go around proclaiming yourselves as being the "Champions and Defenders of Democracy", one might think that you guys had this whole "voting" thing down pat by now. However, since it appears that you do not, allow me to offer the following suggestion:

Here in Canada, we have this really cool high-tech voting mechanism. It is called a "pencil and paper". Let me explain how it works:

1) Some wise person takes the input media known as "a piece of paper" and prints on it the names of all the people who are running in this election. Next to each, their party affiliation (where applicable) and a circle is printed, making it very clear which party and circle go with which candidate.

2) In turn, every Canadian who gives a sufficient level of "a damn" is handed a some input media (aka "a ballot") and goes to stand behind a shield made of high-tech cardboard, where they find the "pencil" component of the input device. Using this pencil device, the voter places a symbol in the circle next to the name of the person they want to vote for. Elections Canada is even so nice as to provide a list of acceptable symbols in every voting booth.

3) The voter then uses a complex voting concealment method called "folding" to hide their selection as they take their ballot to the high-tech vote collection mechanism known as "a box with a hole in it" and insert their ballot.

Done. No fuss. No muss. Pencils never fail to boot or leave chads a-hanging.

I may be a technogeek, but sometimes, for some applications, I like simple solutions. :)