Just when you make something fool-proof along come better fools.
Part of the problem is that voting is 'important' enough to also have many smart people working on getting around the system. With a properly designed system, the worst a fool can do is vote for somebody he or she didn't want to, or spoil their ballot, ending up voting for nobody.
I've had people get upset with me about it before - but I don't think that this is necessarily a bad thing. I'm not talking about obfusticated ballots here, I'm talking about the 'fill in the bubble' type scannotron sheets I've been issued since elementary for various standardized tests. It's a big sheet of paper - with stuff like:
President of the United States:
O Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton
O John McCain, Mike Huckabee
In addition, the sheet has instructions: Fill out the bubble completely, don't mark elsewhere, etc... You're told to fill out the bubble when you get your ballot. Even my grandmother has taken standardized tests.
Last time I voted, I noticed that they had one of the blowup readers for people hard of vision, and poll assistants to handle any other handicaps such as blindness. Heck, I think they might of even had a reader system for that.
For equal opportunity, ballot readers that allow somebody without vision to vote isn't a bad idea. Touch screens? Touch screens by default are very UNFRIENDLY to the visually disabled.
Personally, I think that citizens should be able to speak and read english, so I wouldn't list multiple language ballots as a requirement. If California wants them, California can have them. At least the electoral college thing limits the damage any one state can do if they mess stuff up. If you don't read/speak english very well, how hard is it to remember or even write down the translations to a few words like 'President', 'Governor', 'Mayor', 'Judge', and 'Dog Catcher'?.
