A Second Life for a Voting Machine?

by Tim Storey

Many legislatures spent time studying new voting equipment in the wake of the 2000 election meltdown in Florida and the subsequent passage of the federal Help America Vote Act in 2002. This law required many states to buy new voting equipment in order to receive money from Washington to help modernize the elections infrastructure. Then, policymakers had to re-engage the topic when critics questioned the security of electronic voting machines.

A colleague recently forwarded us a link to a YouTube video that offers an amusing post-script to the whole debate. It appears (one can never know for sure with a You Tube video) to show that a voting machine has been re-programmed to play the classic arcade game, Pac Man. I enjoyed the comment below the video from someone called "thepro7us" who says, "I probably would've voted if I got to play the game after my vote was cast."

If you have 60 seconds to squander on a Friday, watch this video of a voting machine that has been re-purposed: Voting Machine Pac Man.

A rose from The Thicket to Gary Wieman.