on virtual hanging chads

despite some of scepticism regarding voting via the internet i did just that today by voting online in the michigan democratic caucus. amusingly, the online form had a bug in the “write-in” text fields that followed a set of radio buttons. the first “write-in” field was for the candidate and the second “write-in” field was for which party you were affiliated with – i.e. if you don’t want to select a candidate or party-affiliation from the selected radio buttons, then you get to fill in a custom answer in the “write-in” field with each text field having a corresponding radio button. i discovered, that if you clicked on the radio button associated with the second “write-in” and then tried to select the text field, the form would deselect your selection for the candidate, making it appear that you didn’t select a candidate. after much cussing at the computer screen, kris informed me that it would work if you didn’t select the second radio button and simply clicked on the test field.

maybe it was a firebird glitch and the website did ask you to verify the selections after you submitted the form, but nonetheless i’m sure grandma would be confused.

Leave a Reply