Eight minutes is all it takes to be heard and vote

Holly Mitchell, right, checks with husband Shane as they vote at the TSC. Shane said, "[Electronic voting] was really easy. I don't know why people worried." / Photo by Mikaylie Kartchner

By Irene Gudmundson

November 6, 2006 | Read the booklet I got in the mail a month ago, check. Get in line, check. Tell them my birthday and name, check. Insert blue voter's card into machine, check. Mark the candidates I like, check. Print ballot, check. Submit ballot, done.

Eight minutes later, I'm eating lunch with my husband and discussing our plan for the coming weekend.

Voting was that easy. I even had to wait in line, behind three people, for some of those eight minutes.

The new electronic voting booths are a piece of cake: directions explain everything from how to insert the little blue card you're given to how to cancel your ballot altogether and start over with a new one. If that's not enough, attendants at the voting center can help you out as well. My experience was one of ease, and yours can be too.

It started with waiting in a line, which can always be a stressor in a busy life, but when more people started lining up behind me I felt worse for them. Sometimes I can't get my stereo's remote to change the CD, so you can imagine how long this new electronic voting thing might take me.

I'd been there before, about 2 minutes earlier when the attendants told me my address wasn't correct in their records. Before I could vote I would need to change that. So I called the Cache County Clerk's office and chatted with a woman who couldn't get her computer to work, much like my stereo remote, and she fixed my records in a flash -- well, after she got the computer going, that is.

From the moment I stepped behind three people, who like me, were taking advantage of early voting, to when I got my limited edition "I VOTED" sticker, eight minutes had passed.

Eight minutes. The time it takes to boil the pasta for macaroni and cheese, to walk across campus, OK, briskly, walk across campus. The time it takes to bake a batch of cookies or fill your car with gas. Eight minutes. No stress at all.

I got my lunch and I even made it to work early. Beside the address change, which was easily fixed over the phone, I had no problem. Now if I could just work out that stereo remote.

It's probably more important that voting is easier than listening to music. Just put your blue voter's card programmed just for your precinct into the upper right corner of the monitor and then it directs you from there. Touch the screen next to the name you're in favor of; if you don't like that, touch next to another candidate and your vote changes. At the end you double check your vote on a printed paper next to the computer screen and even at that point have a chance to change your mind.

Could voting get any easier? Probably, but I don't think we'll ever have the new voting booths in our living rooms or the candidates going door-to-door explaining their platforms. This year my vote was heard, and yours can be too -- in eight minutes.

RB
RB