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Touchscreen voting a mess in Houston. Apparently our entire democracy is now beholden to the whoops factor inherent in all electronic blackbox voting (Houston Chronicle):

David Beirne, a spokesman for the Harris County Clerk's Office, said technicians quickly determined that there wasn't actually a problem with the eSlate voting machines and that election judges weren't following the correct steps to match voters with the right ballots. The repairmen also discovered, however, that the 12 machines at the hotel were improperly set up, with all linked to the one unit that seemed to be malfunctioning, instead of having half linked to another that would continue to operate in case of a glitch with one.

"...All linked to one unit that seemed to be malfunctioning" just about sums up what's wrong with electronic voting machines. They are dangerously centralized, and the mechanism behind how they work — regardless of what their pitchmen say — is totally opaque.

"Improperly set up" machines are, of course, the whole point behind electronic voting. It's so much easier to have the ability to fix an election that way.

Here's Travis County's FAQ on the eSlate system.

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