2000nov08. The really amazing part of this whole Florida debacle is not that the system has been proven lacking, but that it’s lacking in so many ways. Part of the problem with the vote count in Florida centers around the actual ballot form passed out in Palm Beach (which appear in this article). It’s not clear from the diagram if the people complaining about “two holes for Gore” have a case, as whoever prepared this graphic neglected to emphasize where exactly the holes were to be punched (I’d fire the guy, actually). Using an oft-proven method of “intelligent guessing,” it would seem that these people are completely balmy, as anyone who took the time to follow each arrow to each hole would see exactly which hole represented which candidate (and isn’t that apt). But this is the old “user interface” bugaboo – trying to force people to understand poorly-designed/cheap technology (in this case, making all of the holes line up in one row so the machine only has to have one reader strip, and thus costs less) instead of having technology understand people.
