All glories to Dave Barry

[Guest guest]

Hare Krishna.

 

Posted on Fri, Sep. 13, 2002

 

How to vote in 1 easy step: Use chisel, tablet

 

The question you're asking yourself is: Does South Florida contain the

highest concentration of morons in the entire world? Or just in the United

States?

 

The reason you're asking this, of course, is South Florida's performance in

Tuesday's election. This election was critical to our image, because of our

performance in the 2000 presidential election -- the one that ended up with

the entire rest of the nation watching, impatiently, as clumps of

sleep-deprived South Florida election officials squinted at cardboard

ballots, trying to figure out what the hell the voters were thinking when

they apparently voted for two presidents, or no presidents, or part of a

president, or, in some cases, simply drooled on the ballot.

 

Before it was over, we had roughly 23 million lawyers down here -- nearly a

quarter of the nation's lawyer supply -- filing briefs and torts and arguing

in endless televised hearings, until finally the whole mess wound up in the

U.S. Supreme Court, which declared George W. Bush the winner, but only

because it would have been unconstitutional to apply the more logical

remedy, which would be to kick Florida out of the union. We were a national

joke. The phrase ''Florida voter'' became a standard comedy-routine synonym

for ``idiot.''

 

And thus there was a lot of pressure on Florida, and particularly South

Florida, to redeem itself in Tuesday's election. We knew that we could not

afford to repeat the 2000 fiasco, and our election officials had more than a

year and a half to develop, and test, a voting procedure that even we could

not screw up.

 

So what did our election officials do? Let's examine the problem, and two

possible solutions:

 

THE PROBLEM: Voters had trouble understanding a balloting system that

required them to punch holes in a piece of cardboard.

 

SOLUTION A: Use an even simpler system.

 

SOLUTION B: Use a more complicated system.

 

Pretty much any life form with a central nervous system, including a

reasonably bright squid, would choose Solution A. So naturally our election

officials went with Solution B. Yes. Having seen that South Florida voters

-- people who have yet to figure out how an automobile turn signal works --

were baffled by pieces of cardboard, our leaders decided to confront them

with . . . computers! And we all know how easy it is to figure out

unfamiliar computer systems! That's why the expression ''As easy as figuring

out an unfamiliar computer system'' is so common.

 

So Miami-Dade County spent $24.5 million on 7,200 computerized voting

machines. Broward spent $17.2 million on 5,200 of the same machines. The

particular model that we bought is called the ``iVotronic.''

 

TIP FOR CONSUMERS: Never buy a product whose manufacturer does not

understand the basic rules of capitalization.

 

But confronting voters with unfamiliar machines does not, by itself, ensure

that your election will be a mess. No, to GUARANTEE failure, you need to

take additional precautions, such as: (1) Not training poll workers

adequately; (2) Providing confusing instructions; (3) Not having enough

technical support; (4) Changing the voting-machine software at the last

minute.

 

We managed to make all of these mistakes, and more, which is why today, days

later, we are still not 100 percent certain which candidates won on Tuesday.

I would not completely rule out Pat Buchanan.

 

And so once again, South Florida is making life easy for Leno and Letterman.

What is the solution? How can we avoid being international laughingstocks in

the next election?

 

My suggestion -- call me crazy -- is that we print the ballot on paper, with

a box next to each candidate's name. We instruct the voters to put an ''X''

in their candidate's box. Then we have human beings count the ``X''s, and

the candidate with the most votes wins.

 

I realize this is a radical system, but I believe that it would be difficult

for even South Floridians to screw it up.

 

We could get our elections over within a single day, like everybody else,

and we would have more time to enjoy the pleasures of South Florida.

 

Such as scuba diving. On our new artificial reef.

 

Formed by 12,400 iVotronics.

 

Hare Krishna --

 

ys, Balarama Dasa