• Reported by Nate

It's election day here in the states, and for the first time in my short voting history I had the opportunity to vote using a touchscreen interface. The user interface of this windows (95?, it sure looked old) machine caused me to chuckle a bit. There is even an online demo so I can show you what it was like, check it out here. Unfotunately the demo, in all it's ugly glory, fails to show some significant problems. Selection is indicated by a black X on a dark red background - isnt' that the convention for delete? To un-select, the previously selected must be clicked prior to making a new selection (this might have been done for good reason, I'm not sure). The "cast your ballot" button apears in an i-frame style window with a poorly repsonding scrollbar, below the viewable area - perhaps it would be better suited as a physical button?

On the other hand, there are a couple of really important things that are done right with this system: the blind and visually impared can choose to take an "audio ballot", and apparently there was some sort of "magnify" feature that I didn't notice. These features and the plain truth that I personally found it simple to use (for whatever that's worth), leads me to an overall positive conclusion about the system. There is more information about the specific system (including justification for the whopping price tag) I used here in Georgia at the Georgia Electronic Voting website.