Indeed there is a determination to make sure that those who are eligible to vote are able to do so. The staff member I was working with to resolve my problem even took the time to thank me for being a regular voter and wanted to assure me that he understood my concerns that I would have a voice in this election and that my vote would be counted. Long story short on that-- I voted today with not one bit of hassle or delay.

While the new voting machines (as WBIR's somewhat sensational headline suggests) may have had a few operating glitches, I haven't heard any actual news reports or witnessed any problems that could not have had happened similarily under the former machines. For that matter, those same problems (needing to reboot and other power glitches) happened in the previous elections, too. If we voted with pencil and paper someone would file a story about voting delays because the lead in someone's No. 2 Ticonderoga broke just as they were about to make their choice. News directors know that no one tunes into the news to see if all the planes landed safely, all drivers made it home unscathed, and all the voting machines worked smoother than human capability. It pays to point out the aberrations because the news is about aberrations not normalcy.

That being said, the WBIR piece did gloss over what I thought was a pretty nifty representation of McKay's sense of civic duty to voters-- the efforts by election workers to hand deliver a paper ballot to a voter who said he couldn't wait for the computer machines to reboot. THAT is responsive government and a mighty fine customer service ethic too rarely seen in civic leadership.