Gitelman, “Voting Machines and the Voters They Represent”
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VOTING MACHINES AND THE VOTERS THEY REPRESENT
Technology and democratic intentby Lisa Gitelman
While the contested presidential election of 2000 famously offered Americans a five-week lesson in civics, it also provided a crash course in the metaphysics of representation. Political representation was at issue—one “man,” one vote—but a second form of representation proved at least as vexing: How do the television networks represent outcomes on election night? How did Palm Beach County’s “butterfly” ballot represent electoral choices to voters? And exactly what sort of punch mark or dimple in a ballot should represent a voter’s intent? Though the political importance (in a pretty narrow, partisan sense) of questions like these was obvious throughout the Bush/Gore controversy, they address representation not as a function of politics but as a function of media. American voters count on media (conventionally “the Media”) to represent the outcome of elections accurately and quickly. They similarly count on the media of voting—the materials of ballots and voting machines—to aid them in representing their individual electoral choices to the public at large. Though ballots and voting machines are less familiarly “media” than televisions, newspapers, or the Internet, their mediating role is at least as important to the democratic process.
As it turned out, the electoral controversy of November and December 2000 revealed a central tension that forever attends this second form of representation: Whether it means switching on the TV or stepping into a voting booth, media are deployed precisely because they are expected to efface themselves. The television and the punch-card ballot are supposed to answer questions about election returns, not to stir up thornier questions about televisions and ballots. Put another way, audiences expect to look through media, not at them. Yet in 2000 the American public was forced to reckon with the question of how the material properties of punch-card ballots and voting machines, far from effacing themselves, had helped to determine the outcome of the election.
[This is just a snippet. Read the whole article at Common-Place, then come back here to comment below.]
On a slightly related note, seeing as how it is election day, there is another consequence of the advancing technology of voting machines. Having completed my electronic ballot with a stylus, I was prompted by the helpful machine to review my selections, as I had apparently missed a section. Reviewing my choices, I saw no omission and tried again. The same helpful electronic notice flashed across my screen. Confused, I turned to the well-intentioned young man in his early twenties for an answer. “What is wrong with this machine,” I asked. “Uh, not certain” was my reassuring answer. “Will my vote be counted?” A shrug followed by, “I’m not really sure how these things work.”
As technology advances, the ability of volunteers to sort out errors and assist voters correspondingly decreases. Thus technology certainly has the potential to be an undemocratic force, insofar as it removes judgment and decision-making from the local (volunteer) level and moves those decisions upward, into the bureaucracy. Always a fan of innovation, as I cast that dubious electronic vote I couldn’t help but think that the small army of elderly volunteers would have been more than capable of assisting me with a paper ballot, dangling chads or no.
Comment by Missouri Voter — November 4, 2008 @ 2:12 pm