One of the stories overlooked in the over-fattened news cycle of the past week happened in Mississippi, where they had a Republican gubernatorial runoff between lieutenant governor Tate Reeves and a former state supreme court justice named Bill Waller. Touch-screen voting machines were in use and, as WAPT-TV points out, the machines had minds of their own. And there was video.

Video of the machine was posted on social media that appears to show a man trying to vote for Republican candidate for governor William Waller Jr., but the machine would only cast a vote for opposing candidate Tate Reeves.“Our office was made aware this morning that one TSX machine was malfunctioning in the Republican Primary at the Burgess precinct in Lafayette County. We contacted the county. The county dispatched a technician to the precinct and the tablet is being replaced. To our knowledge, only one machine was malfunctioning. Apparently 19 votes were cast prior to the error being detected,” said Anna C. Moak, with the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office.

Touch-screen machines were oversold in the first place. Back in 2000, in the wake of the Florida heist, they were loudly promoted as the "solution" to the problem of dimpled and/or hanging chad. Within a year, however, a study from MIT found that the touch-screens were no more or less reliable than punch cards had been. From the Chicago Tribune:

"It’s a surprise," said Mark Pritchett, director of Gov. Jeb Bush’s election task force. It was created in the wake of last year’s 36-day election marathon, punctuated by ballot recounts and court rulings. The task force’s final recommendations for improving elections in Florida is due to the governor next month and will be passed on to the Legislature. While the findings are surprising, the solution isn’t, Pritchett said. As people become more familiar with the touch-screen system, the less likely they will be to make mistakes, he said. While touch-screen systems are not the most reliable voting systems now, they may be one day, the report says. "New machinery might produce elevated levels of voter confusion, simply because people make mistakes more with unfamiliar tasks," according to the report, which relied on data from the 1988, 1992, 1996 and the 2000 elections.

The "unfamiliar task" in question involved pressing a video screen next to the name of the candidate for whom you wanted to vote. Using your cellphone to order a pizza is more complicated. And then there were the predictions.

"Touch-screen technology is going to evolve in the next three to five years," said Pam Iorio, Hillsborough County elections supervisor, who testified before the task force last month. "There are so many people out there, individuals and companies, developing new and different technologies. I think the touch-screen market five years from now will be much better than today. There will be more competition, and that should bring the price down."

The technology will be cheaper. I'm retroactively reassured. Not.

Tate Reeves. Rogelio V Solis/AP/Shutterstock

Can we finally listen to Barack Obama's Homeland Security secretary Jeh Johnson and declare at least the systems involved in national elections to be part of the critical national infrastructure?

The designation of election infrastructure as critical infrastructure subsector does mean that election infrastructure becomes a priority within the National Infrastructure Protection Plan. It also enables this Department to prioritize our cybersecurity assistance to state and local election officials, but only for those who request it. Further, the designation makes clear both domestically and internationally that election infrastructure enjoys all the benefits and protections of critical infrastructure that the U.S. government has to offer. Finally, a designation makes it easier for the federal government to have full and frank discussions with key stakeholders regarding sensitive vulnerability information.

Elections are not supposed to be quaint, except for the bake sales. (I like the bake sales.) Replacing elderly county clerks with unreliable machines is not a solution. Ratfcking by glitch is just as damaging as ratfcking by volition to the country's confidence that things are on the up and up. At some point, it doesn't matter why something is unreliable. Fix this, or just have every polling station placed atop a grassy knoll.

Charles P. Pierce Charles P Pierce is the author of four books, most recently Idiot America, and has been a working journalist since 1976.

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