Monday, May 14, 2012

Election polls


Election polls are becoming more and more modern these days. While the past had paper ballots only, today many places for voting use e-Slates and simplify the job of casting a vote. In order to cast your vote electronically you first need to do a bit of research and see the steps you need to follow. There are videos and instructions online telling you what to do once at the election polls. So let us review the steps for electronic voting.


First, when entering the poll precinct you need to address the election officer so that he/she can check your data in the registration papers. He/She will give you an access code without which there is no point in trying to operate an e-Slate. Once at the poll booth, if you get stuck or just have no idea what to do to cast your ballot, you can ask the officer to help you out. But it so seems that most people using this system of voting have not needed help since the e-Slate is very intuitively made and designed so that voters know exactly what to do. No computer skills whatsoever are required of voters in case they decide to vote electronically.


So, once at the poll booth you need to use the select and the enter buttons in order to go through the menu of the e-Slate. You first need to insert the access code you received when entering the only one of the city election polls where you are assigned to go to. After that the ballot appears on the screen and you can use the select button to move to the choices you want to make. The choices the fields of which you move on will be highlighted so it is quite easy to follow what is displayed on the screen. After having reached the fields corresponding to the representatives you intend to vote for, press the enter button in order to confirm you choice.


In case you change your mind, you can select another of the options and then press enter again to change and confirm your final choice. Finally, when all the choices are marked, you can see a summary of your entire ballot. This summary is also very helpful because it will not let you leave election polls without marking and expressing all the needed choices. On the summary screen you can see which choices were not made and you can select them to go back and complete the process of choosing and marking. Only after having checked everything with the summary screen press cast ballot, and thus your vote has been expressed.