Being Floridians, we understand that things like voting, elections, and democracy aren’t easy. Heck, I don’t need to tell you that these concepts are much more complex than most people will ever know — we’re still trying to figure it all out and we’re still failing. Maybe citizens of Ohio understand this too, but most of the country (nay, The World) just seems to think it’s sooo easy. Like you could just pick your favorite person, count ‘em up, and declare a winner. As if.

It seems like only yesterday that electronic voting was the wave of the future — a future with no paper trails and hackable machines. But hey, details. You can play Ms. Pac Man on a Diebold machine if you get bored in the middle of the judicial section of a ballot. A plain sheet of paper can’t do that, France!

Anyways, the complaints were so strong that Tallahassee was forced to act. No more pinball voting machines for you.

Earlier this week, four companies demoed their stuff, each vying for the opportunity to make Florida the laughingstock of the world all over again. The good news: Paper ballots. We’re talking real paper here, people. No word on the special pens being filled with disappearing ink or not, but either way it’s an improvement.

After it’s all said and done, this is a band-aid on a ripped artery.

Yes, paper trails are good. Bravo, we’ve figured out paper, something invented around 3000 BC. You’ll mark the ballot manually, it gets slid into a magic machine that makes sure there are no stray marks anywhere, and does the rest. Which brings us to the problem. It’s still a closed-system proprietary electronic device that’s doing the actual counting.

Think about the distinction between “touch screen voting” and what we have here. The problems with what we called “touch screen voting” had nothing at all to do with the touch screen. A touch screen is, in fact, a superior user-interface to making marks on paper. It’s easy to pick the choice you want, it takes you through every race, and it even warns you if you accidently skipped any.

The biggest issue with the touch screen systems were their paperless nature — so the obvious question is: Why not make a touch screen that also has a paper trail? You’d use your fingers, a filled-in ballot prints out, you double-check it if you like, drop it in the box, and get your sticker.

I have to say, I’m perplexed at the touch screen being vilified. As an input device, it’s perfect. The fact that every single one of them prevented any chance of a real recount is mysterious, but nobody has ever complained about a touch screen and actually had a beef with the touch screen itself. Just fix the fact that every single damn one of them used black magik to count votes, and we’d have the best of both worlds.

I’m curious to hear your thoughts on this, Dear Readers. Am I too down on our attempts to get this voting stuff figured out, or are we, The Democracy People, still screwing up?