Today was a day never to be forgotten. I got the chance to talk to my kindergartner on our walk to school today about voting and what a great privilege it is. I honor the sacred privilege, especially in this day when some soldiers giving their lives so other people can vote didn't even get their votes counted last time. So I like to vote in person, partly because I'm not in a war zone and I can, but also because I just like the feeling of knowing my vote made it all the way.

Unfortunately I had an unsettling experience at the polls.

I went to put my ballot in the voting machine and a nice volunteer came within about 3 feet of my ballot as I put it in. No privacy screen at the ballot box. After I pointed out that she was looking right at my ballot she promised me she doesn't look. Huh?

Then she came even closer because my ballot was rejected by the machine. Three other volunteers also rushed to my aid. As it turned out, it was rejecting the ballot because I did not select a party preference, despite instructions on the ballot clearly stating that that if I did not select a party preference, anything I marked in that section would be ignored. Fine with me. The way I see it, for a fraction of the money candidates spend on campaign funding, any serious party should be able to pick their best candidate on their own. Especially if they want to exclude people like me from participating in their private election anyway. Wouldn't that save us all time and money that could be invested into better government. I mean, seriously, is it so hard for the Democratic party to choose between orbital space colonization, Mike the Mover, or Maria Cantwell? I'd pick Maria in a heartbeat but apparently her party needs a taxpayer funded election to arrive at that decision. And can't the Republican party, with its huge database, data mining program, phone banks, and pride on how well they solve problems at the local level so we can have lean government, at least be able to decide on their own who their best potential candidate is going to be? Most of the choices on both sides seemed to be a single candidate and then space for a write-in anyway.

My voting experience continued as the election officials all huddled around and watched my ballot rejected a few times, asking me how I had voted on the preference portion, and then someone came up with a key to open the machine, and pressed a 'YES' button while feeding in the vote. Hooray! My vote was counted. In fact, they all knew the exact number of my ballot since the tally was on the machine and the keymaster told everyone what it was as he was closing the machine so they could celebrate how many ballots they were up to. I guess you could later count backwards in the stack and know exactly who I voted for. I'm not complaining about my local election officials, they are my neighbors and volunteers and I appreciate their service. We all had a good laugh.

But what irks me is the fact that my otherwise secret ballot was rejected because I was an 'independent' voter. Is privacy only extended to those with a party preference? I guess the mail-in option is the most private way for me in the future. The only problem I have with mail-in is not knowing how many recounts it will take to find my vote in some forgotten mail bag, as happened to some people in the last big King County election.

I probably even wouldn't have posted this, except for this link I came across with respect to ballot security after voting today. I don't know if it's true but apparently if I had brought a hotel minibar key with me, I could have unlocked the panel and hit the override button myself. As a computer scientist and a computer security professional I am convinced other software vulnerabilities exist in our voting machines - but there doesn't even seem to be a freedom of information act way for independents with software engineering expertise to check the integrity of these machines ourselves. Today my ballot wasn't private, and the software in the voting machine was a complete secret. It should be the other way around. A secret ballot but a voting system that is secure enough that we are not afraid to open it up to public review.

We're so busy fighting for democracy abroad I can't help but wonder if we have slipped in our duty to preserve it in the homeland.