At Sheetz, a convenience store and gas station chain in PA and surrounding states, you can order made-to-order meals (aka MTOs). You go to the counter, select the items you want (pictures associated with each), the ingredients on those items (pictures again), the quantity of the items, and a printout of the specified order with a UPC to be scanned at the checkout. Foolproof? No. Good to way express and confirm intentions? Yes, and it comes with a reliably correct yummy dinner.

In Pennsylvania, ballot machines are electronic with no paper ballot. By law, there is not to be a paper record of the ballot. However, this raises concerns by citizens and civil rights groups that a networked system of electronic devices can result in vote manipulation by hackers and political miscreants. Also, the booths are text-only machines. The machines allow for a confirmation at the end of the ballot steps, with a final “Submit Vote” button blinking brightly in your face. Press it. Get an “I Voted” sticker. And that’s it.

While voting is politically satisfying, I don’t walk out with the satisfaction I’d like contextually. Sure, the “I Voted” sticker is great community guilt device and the numbers scroll on the TV later in the evening. I know that when Oregon’s votes are posted in November in wee hours in the morning that they cast their ballots online or by mail.

I don’t doubt my vote is counted correctly. What I think I miss is the feeling of sliding the ballot into the ballot box. That is the usability I think is now missing that technology hasn’t solved.

During the first post-Saddam Iraqi election, voters were widely televised celebrating and waving their purple ink covered fingers in the air. The first State of the Union address featured (largely Republican) Congressmembers waving ink covered fingers in a sign of solidarity with the Iraqi people. The public celebration of this low-tech voting method is, again, the usability I feel is now missing from our own voting process.

What I wish we had was a Sheetz MTO-like process. Vote for candidates, with their pictures associated with their names, color coded parties, and office. Confirm at the end, again with candidate pictures, names, parties, and office. Press vote, but also get a print-out with a UPC you take to the ballot box. The randomly assigned UPC is unique to the certain combination of candidates selected. In the event of a recount or electronic ballot tampering, the paper ballots are what’s counted by using a laser reader on the UPC. And, as a voter, I get the humanizing experience of democracy by getting to place a ballot in a box. And the all important “I Voted” sticker.