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Wednesday, October 25, 2006
America: we sort of take elections seriously
How seriously do we take elections in this country? So seriously that if we only get half a candidates name on the ballot, it's no big deal:
U.S. Senate candidate James Webb's last name has been cut off on part of the electronic ballot used by voters in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville because of a computer glitch that also affects other candidates with long names, city officials said yesterday . . . Election officials attribute the mistake to an increase in the type size on the ballot. Although the larger type is easier to read, it also unintentionally shortens the longer names on the summary page of the ballot.
Thus, Democratic candidate Webb will appear with his first name and nickname only -- or "James H. 'Jim' " -- on summary pages in Alexandria, Falls Church and Charlottesville, the only jurisdictions in Virginia that use balloting machines manufactured by Hart InterCivic of Austin.
Now I can think of one real quick fix for this (other than getting software and hardware that works, which seems to be an unreasonable demand). Let James H. 'Jim' Webb run as "James H. Webb" or "Jim Webb" in those counties with faulty devices. It's not hard to solve this problem.
But look at the bigger issue -- it looks like the machinery only can handle 14 characters -- including spaces and apostrophes in a name. Could you ever anticipate such a problem? A candidate with a name longer than 14 characters? How about George Washington (17 characters counting the space) or Thomas Jefferson (16) or Franklin D. Roosevelt (21).
