I thought I’d slip into the Keller Town Hall during lunch and vote early.  I was surprised to see that there was a fairly considerable line when I got there.

(Sorry about the poor image quality, but I only had my picture phone with me at the time.)

It took about 45 minutes from the time I entered the line until the time I was finished.  I was also surprised to see that they were using electronic voting machines after having downloaded the sample ballot, which was of the “fill in the line” style that I’ve grown used to.  After checking my voter registration card, the election worker gave me a printout with an access code that is used to activate the machine (which I assume also tells the machine what ballot to give you).  The machine itself was fairly easy to use, at least for someone like me who uses computers, PDAs, and cell phones all the time.  I would expect that some of the elderly voters will have problems with it, though, unless the font size can be increased.

I didn’t look at the specs of the voting machine too closely yet to see if it generates a paper trail.  There definitely wasn’t any kind of printer on the machine itself, although there could have been some kind of audit trail generated at the controller system.  I certainly hope so, anyway.  I don’t trust the fate of our elections to flash memory, no matter how rugged it may be. 

Update:  I checked back on eSlate’s site and found the following in their “FAQ” with regards to audit trails:

eSlate’s Cast Vote Verification System provides election officials with a complete trail to support recounts or audits. eSlate can provide a Cast Vote Record, either in paper or electronic form, for each voting device, or on a precinct basis.

That doesn’t tell me everything I wanted to know, but at least it says that it is possible to create a paper audit trail.  Let’s hope that this feature is being used.  Can you imagine the lawsuits that would result if one of the voting machines had a memory card go bad without an audit trail?  How about in a really close race?  Unlike those idiots in Florida who couldn’t be arsed to read the directions and select the right candidate and then claimed disenfranchisement, this would would be the real deal—votes tossed in a black hole.