Rule 0: People Are Just Human
You've probably noticed that folks outside your specialty don't quite understand what you do for a living and you can't clarify it for them, either. Indeed, even your parents and children probably lack a good appreciation for your work. The converse is also true, but you might have a harder time appreciating how little you understand what somebody else is up to.
There's a simple reason for that: People concentrate on what's important to them, not what's important to anybody else. For most of human history that didn't make much difference, because everybody did pretty much the same things and everyone's knowledge overlapped.
The process of running an election depends largely on unpaid (or barely paid) volunteers, organized and directed by a sometimes skeletal staff of government employees with other jobs during much of the year. That worked well in the days of paper ballots stuffed into wooden boxes, ran into trouble with mechanical voting machines, and hard-crashed with the advent of computer-based voting technology. Elections happen at most a few times a year, far too infrequently to reinforce the skills required for the job. Verifying signatures, directing voters, and other low-tech parts of the process aren't difficult, but operating and troubleshooting any computer-based system requires well-practiced skills.
Poll workers reported a large number of broken machines...Reasons why these machines couldn't be used included: machine malfunctioned, the machine froze and could not be reset, the printer failed, or the printer was missing and the machine could not be used...There were extensive reports of difficulties zeroing out the machines, either due to lack of training, malfunctioning of the accumulator machine, or because memory cards were placed in the wrong machines.
The Report suggests that, in addition to verifying that the machines are functional and correctly configured before Election Day, the poll workers must be fully trained how to set the DREs up, basic troubleshooting, and on the accumulation process.
To a large extent, poll workers come from the ranks of retirees, if only because they're the only ones with sufficient free time for what can be a 15-hour day. Whether it's reasonable to expect poll workers to put in that much uninterrupted time is another matter: Here in Dutchess County, the Board of Elections strongly recommends that inspectors not leave their assigned polling places for meals or rest breaks, let alone to vote in their own precincts.
My wife has been a Dutchess County Election Inspector for the last several years and reports that, after five elections, she's just now comfortable with mechanical lever machines and the overall voting process. That puts her well ahead of several less-technically inclined compatriots, who depend on her for answers. She laconically describes the training as "inadequate."
In general, most ordinary folks, let alone retirees, lack the qualifications to perform even rudimentary troubleshooting of computer-based systems. If they were qualified, then you wouldn't get nearly as many desperate phone calls from your friends and relations asking for help with their PCs, nor would the major computer manufacturers have such trouble providing tech support.
In summary, mandating electronic voting systems, even those with a paper audit trail, requires far more knowledge from poll workers than can be reasonably expected given the low duty cycle and high technical content of the job.
