County Misses Golden Election Opportunity

The disastrous election night March 7 for Jefferson County resonated into this week with the discovery of a gigantic error in how the electronically-cast votes were counted. Some votes were counted twice last week, so a recount was held Monday.
The outcome was the same, and ES&S, the company that sold the county the machines, will foot the recount bill.
However, the debacle exposed a lack of preparedness for the transition from paper ballots - and those potential hanging chads - to touch-screen voting. It also underscored the old adage about how practice makes perfect.
What Jefferson County should have done was have a small-scale practice election. It should have set up a few touch-screen machines in the courthouse and let anyone and everyone, whether it be an unregistered voter with a felony record or a drooling baby, come by for a test vote.
The ballot items could have helped unofficially decide all kinds of lingering issues, such as who would win in a fight between Batman and Spiderman, whether Crawdad Disney should be built next to Ford Park, paper versus plastic, frying pan versus fire, the 1985-86 Chicago Bears versus the 1972-73 Miami Dolphins, Ford versus Chevy, Ali versus Tyson, toilet paper roll installed with the loose end coming over the top or hanging down the back, etc. We could have put all the perennial local candidates, the ones who are lucky to get 0.000001 percent of the vote, in one big race to decide which one was the most popular.
We could have elected Donald Duck as U.S. president.
Yes, the county missed a ripe opportunity here to test its system and do so in a humorous way that could have solved age-old questions.
After all, if anyone could decide whether the chicken or the egg came first, it would be the wise and resilient folks of Jefferson County.