Digital Radio & Hand Counting Votes

During the school year, my drive home usually occurs around dusk. This means that the AM side of my radio becomes a blur of 1,000 voices speaking at once. I'm somewhat addicted to my local NPR station, AM-580 and have a need to hear what's being said on "All Things Considered" so rather than turn away from the crowded drone of the AM frequencies, I turn it up, hoping that something will make sense.

AM long ago fell out of favor. In 1997, I was told I could buy a local AM frequency for as little as $50. The price may actually have gone down. For anyone who has listened to AM radio for an extended period of time, you know how a blender or microwave can create noise in the signal. A lawnmower engine, a passing plane, and especially lightning cause a crackle that drowns out everything being said. Not being able to broadcast 24 hours a day was the biggest problem for AM ... not to mention that unlike FM, it wasn't in stereo. Now, my favorite AM station is also being broadcast in digital clarity on their digital FM sister station: No more straining to hear, no more fading out at sunset, no lost words during thunderstorms. This is another nail in the coffin of AM, my analog friend.

Just after the chipper announcement about buying a digital radio to "increase my listening pleasure," a news article began. It's just after the election and recounts all over the country have begun. Former Saturday Night Live comedian, Al Franken will probably be the victim of the recounting process. This got me thinking. I am an election judge; I'm responsible for distributing ballots, collecting them, and delivering them securely to our county clerk. Our votes have been counted like "Scantron tests" ever since the "chads" debacle of the 2000 presidential election. What does this mean for the digital revolution?

The ballots are marked with a felt tip pen (analog) and counted by a laser scanner (digital). Unlike precincts in Florida, our ballot boxes print up multiple copies of a receipt that tallies the votes (analog). This is done "in case something happens to the hard drive." Should an election come down to a recount in my county, all of the paper ballots are removed and counted again by hand (analog). The machines we use could have been rigged to deliver the vote tallies over the Internet (digital) but there was concern about hackers and network security, so we deliver the hard drive to a county representative (analog) where it presumably has its information uploaded to a server at the county clerk's office (digital).

Perhaps my problem with digital technology is philosophical. Digital language is binary (either "1" or "0") with no compromise. This is great when it works. The problem is the analog frailties of life itself. Whether it's a heavy rain choking off the perfect digital signal of the radio thereby causing dead silence, or Grandpa Jones marking multiple candidates for president, the right and wrong clarity of digital technology seems misguided. Yes, digital signals are clear, but the inflexibility of the technology allows nothing to come through in imperfect conditions.

We're right to have multiple backup systems and analog checks for our still new digital conveniences. Until someone can program digital receivers to interpret our analog inputs without digitally-minded, clear-cut, right-or-wrong perceptions, we're still going to need people (analog) to occasionally put a check on our robotic system.